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HOSPITAL HEROES 




Elizabeth Walker Black. 



HOSPITAL HEROES 



BY 
ELIZABETH WALKER BLACK 



" We've seen too much to remember. We'ra 
too little to hold it. Men are things that 
think a little but chiefly forget. If one did 
remember there wouldn't be any more war." 
— " Under Fire." 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1919 



COPYEIGHT, 1919, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS 
PUBLISHED JANUARY, 1919 







IAN 30 i3iS 



ASS- 



C))CLA5ll45'jL 



TO 

MY MOTHER AND FATHER 

WHO HAVE FOXXB STARS IN THEIE SEEVICE FLAQ 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

I wish to thank Laurette Taylor for giv- 
ing me the inspiration to go "Out There,'* 
untrained, but willing to work, the Amer- 
ican Girls' Aid for my passport, and Mrs. 
Noe-Daly for taking me to the front. 

For helping me to "stick it," my thanks 
are due to the letters written by my mother 
and my Civil War uncle, who beUeve that 
girls, as well as boys, should leave home to 
stand by the colors, and serve with every 
bit of themselves the country which is the 
mother of us all. 

Elizabeth Walker Black. 



CONTENTS 

CHAFTEB PAGX 

I. The Letter-Box 3 

II. American Crusaders 19 

III. With the Third French Army . 36 

IV. The -Blesses 54 

V. Life at the Front 75 

VI. An Attack 96 

VII. Under Fire 115 

VIII. Fetes 128 

IX. Evacuation op Auto Chir No. 7 . 148 

X. Arrival of the British Fifth Army 167 

XI. En Repos . 182 

XII. During the German Advance . . 199 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

EHzaheth Walker Black Frontispiece : 

VACINQ FAGB 

Cugny 42 

"Monsieur le Valet" and other patients of Ward V . 70 

The hospital in winter 76 ' 

Dressings in the " salle de pansements" 104 

WardV 130 

The evacuation train 158 

The arrival of the British Fifth Army 168 / 



HOSPITAL HEROES 



CHAPTER I 
THE LETTER-BOX 

^ I^HE office of "Gestionnaire" was a 
-■- mass of floating veils and soiled 
aprons as every one looked eagerly for 
letters on their way to luncheon. 

"No American mail, yet !" "There hasn't 
been any for weeks." "Nothing much for 
you," tossing some dingy envelopes in my 
direction with my name spelled in every 
conceivable manner: Le Blat, Blac, Blague. 

I took them away to a quiet corner to 
enjoy them by myseK as a dog with his 
bone. They were very precious, these letters, 
written for the most part in pencil; and 
very hard to read, not because the hand- 
writing was poor, but because it was too 
good — so fine and small. They came as 
thank-you letters from the trenches or 
from beds in base hospitals whenever a 



4 HOSPITAL HEROES 

train of evacuation took my wounded out 
of the danger zone. I call them mine be- 
cause I had the ward for "Petits Blesses," 
and, being the less serious cases, they were 
sent off as quickly as possible to make 
room for the new ones who were brought 
in every day from the trenches where they 
received their first dressing. I liked to re- 
ceive these letters, for they showed that in 
spite of the rush of work I had made friends. 
I opened a large yellow envelope, and read: 

Mademoiselle: 

I dare not think you will remember me, 
but receive anyway the thanks of a little 
poilu who had the honor of being taken 
care of by a little miss. A thousand times 
thanks ! How have I had such happiness, I 
who never had luck in my life. I have been 
in two hospitals since leaving the Auto 
Chir No. 7,* but I missed the soft hand that 
used to do my dressing. Often I see in 
thought Ward V, always joyous that ward. 
Do you sing still in the evening? How can 

* Automobile Chirurgical, a surgical hospital ready to move at 
any time, attached to an evacuation or field hospital near the 
front. 



THE LETTER-BOX 5 

I forget the good care you gave ? One does 
not forget so soon good people. I dare not 
ask, though I would like the pleasure of re- 
ceiving a letter from you now and then 
telling me what is happening in that Ward. 
I would like to sharpen your pencil again 
or roll the cotton for the dressing cart. 

Do you remember the day you trimmed 
all our moustaches .f^ How proud we had 
been all the younger ones to have acquired 
these sweeping graces of manhood, and how 
"Monsieur le Tigre" roared when his dis- 
appeared under your relentless shears ! You 
had the courage. Mademoiselle. It was just 
after the "soupe," and you said you could 
stand it no longer, that we must all be 
trimmed like the Americans. Since revisit- 
ing my home in Bordeaux which is full of 
Americans, I appreciate your point of view. 

Now completely healed, I have rejoined 
my regiment. It is five o'clock in the morn- 
ing and I am in a hole with water to my 
ankles. We have reached the second line of 
the Boches. I worked with confidence be- 
cause I thought I was fighting as much for 
you as for myseK, and see, because of this 
thought, I am safe and sound. When will 
this abominable war be ended ? You too are 
near the Front, like the soldiers doing your 
duty. It must be very tiring to be with 



6 HOSPITAL HEROES 

your wounded so long without a rest. I give 
you all my compliments on your beautiful 
act of devotion. Permit me to offer you 
these little flowers received in a letter from 
my parents for good luck. 

I close my letter in wishing you good 

health. Will you wish the doctor, D , 

good morning for me? Also the orderly, 
Leclerq. I pray you to excuse my writing 
in pencil on such modest paper, but it is a 
poor Httle poilu who writes. Receive the 
expression of my highest consideration. 
[Followed by a complicated signature and 
army address.] 

The next letter was written in lavender 
ink on pale-blue paper with a deeper-blue 
border. 

My Dear Little Nurse: 

Our journey in the hospital train was 
good, and I am growing accustomed to hav- 
ing only one leg and a half. I am in the 
mountains to get the good air. This hospital 
is good but how I regret the Auto Chir 
No. 7 where you were so kind. I am bored 
here. I think often of the troubles I made 
you endure. I was a restive patient, never 
satisfied, always scolding. How I shouted 



THE LETTER-BOX 7 

"Enough! Enough! Gently!" every time 
you gave the Carrel treatment. Today I 
ask forgiveness for all that. Will you be 
indulgent enough to pardon me? I cannot 
make grand phrases. I can only say a big 
thank you very simple and sincere. My 
parents write that they wish me to thank 
you for the good care I received during my 
stay in your ward. I am homesick for that 
ward. I hope to see you in the United States 
after the war. I have found your fete day 
in my little calendar of the saints. It is my 
prayer that the war will end on that day, 
November nineteenth. 

I have been decorated with the "medaille 
militaire" and the "croix de guerre" and 
am very happy. But I wish you were here. 
No one comes through the ward at two 
o'clock saying "Milk or chocolate .^^ " and 
counting the number of orders for each on 
her fingers. I remember your difficulty in 
pronouncing French words and phrases 
which made us laugh. A lot of little cares 
and attentions have been discounted which 
I never lacked with you. 

Will you give my address please to the 
"Vaguemestre" so he can send my letters 
hercf^ I will never forget you for you took 
good care of me when I suffered most. I am 
always afraid you may be wounded, too, by 



8 HOSPITAL HEROES 

a bomb from the aeroplanes. You are so 
near the Hnes. And the cold weather? You 
must be frozen. You were always so cold 
and could hardly hold the thermometer to 
shake it down. 

With all the best wishes of a grateful 
little soldier who admires your devotion. 

There were several picture post-cards. 
One from a farmer's unit in the interior 
where the crippled soldiers were taught to 
serve their country even if they had lost 
a hand or a leg. Another was a picture of a 
casino on the Riviera transformed into a 
convalescent home. Another sent "poor 
httle cards of my own country" having re- 
turned on leave before going back to the 
trenches, and beginning the weary game all 
over again. They were all marked "Souvenir 
of a blesse who will never forget," and 
were sent with the usual polite expressions 
of "homages and sentiments the most re- 
spectful and devoted." One very elaborate 
card had flowers embroidered in colored 
silk and opened like an envelope enclosing 



THE LETTER-BOX 9 

a little card printed in English for my special 
benefit: "Greetings from France. To my 
dear Brother." 

One letter was in English from a French 
boy born in San Francisco. He was not one 
of my blesses, but visited my ward often 
and helped me with my French, being a 
better interpreter than letter- writer. Here 
it is as I received it: 

Dear Miss: 

Don't take care if i speak not very well, 
i write like the french speak. You have one 
of my chaps in your room in Bed No. 41. 
tell him if you please that the boys of the 
3 piece give him a good day and hope him 
much better. Tell me how is he please. 

I am at home since yesterday for twenty 
days, i hope you always in good health. 
Your's sincerely, the American boy who 
was in your hospital. Great hope to you! 

An artillery sergeant "permitted" him- 
self to send me his photograph, standing 
proudly beside his cannon. He also sent his 
cordial salutation and profuse apologies for 



10 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the grimace he had made on account of the 
sun. 

Several of the blesses called me "made- 
moiselle marraine" instead of "mademoi- 
selle" or "infirmiere" (nurse). The next 
letter was from one of these godsons of 
war, enclosing a post-card. 

My Dear and Good Little Marraine: 
I permit myself to send you this picture 
of the chateau where we are being cared for. 
I hurry to write you these few words. For 
several days blesses have arrived from Auto 
Chir No. 7 who speak often of Mademoiselle 
Marraine. You were a model "Infirmiere" 
and all the patients loved you. Here I begin 
to make friends who ask me for a song, but 
I think often of the evenings in Ward V. I 
enjoyed singing to you in my little bed 
No. 6. I was better off there than here in 
a chateau. I have lost Riviere. My foot is 
better but I still use crutches. I am 18 kilo- 
meters from Frangois and when I am better 
I shall walk over to say hello. 

With greatest respect and thanks for good 
care received, 

A little lame "fiUeul" who thinks of you. 
I permit myself to give you my address. 



THE LETTER-BOX 11 

and I hope you will write me news of you, 
if only two lines. I cannot help thinking of 
you because you were so kind. 

Another "fiUeul" thanked me most ap- 
preciatively for some cigarettes and choco- 
late I sent to him when the time came for 
him to return to the front hnes: 

Good Morning, Dear Marraine: 

What a good surprise today ! I see you 
are going to spoil your "fiUeul." I received 
the wonderful package in good condition 
and divided it with some of my comrades. 
How grateful we all are ! But I cannot ex- 
press myself well enough to tell you. 

After 24 hours on the railroad and 110 
kilometers on foot, we have arrived at a 
little village not far from you. I tried to 
see you but met the gendarme and not 
having a permission was forced to return. 
Enfin, one must submit without murmur. 
Since it must be thus, one must resign one- 
self to disappointment. I wanted to give 
you a little present, a shell of our glorious 
seventy-five which I have decorated. I am 
sending it hoping you will be pleased. 

We will be in the trenches eight days and 
then released for eight days or for three or 



12 HOSPITAL HEROES 

four months. How long the hours will seem ! 
Do you know what gives me courage? My 
little Marraine. I went to the war in the 
first days of 1914 when there were no good 
marraines to console and amuse us with 
their kind letters of encouragement and 
hope. No one dreamed then that they 
would come to lighten the dreary solitude 
of the trenches. And now who of us is not 
happy in corresponding with one of you? 
You help the task of the soldier more than 
you realize. But there are few who when 
wounded have a marraine for a nurse. I 
wish all the blesses could be cared for by 
a little mademoiselle marraine, but alas ! 
what a futile wish ! To most nurses we are 
but broken bodies. They do not trouble 
themselves about that terrible malady, the 
cafard. I think you made it your duty to 
look happy even if you were not. I hope my 
letter will find you in good health. My 
health is perfect. "Messieurs les Boches" 
must look out for themselves ! 

I opened a little black-bordered note with 
a sinking heart. It was from the young wife 
of an artist who used to draw clever carica- 
tures for me, and had since returned to the 
firing-line. She wrote to tell me of his death. 



THE LETTER-BOX 13 

"killed in action," such a brave little note 
filled more with pride of being the widow 
of a hero than of sorrow or bitterness at 
having the dearest thing in her life snatched 
away so ruthlessly. "One must pay for 
the privilege of being the wife of a hero of 
France. I will pay with my widowhood." 

A dear old man with four children whom 
he has not seen for fourteen months wrote 
in a hand that tottered and spread all over 
the page. He was at the hospital when I 
first came and keeps on writing every now 
and then from another hospital to thank 
me all over again. I wish these poilus would 
not be so grateful. Their appreciation makes 
me feel guilty. There are so many things I 
wanted to do for them, and there was so 
little time. 

Dear Little Infirmiere of Other Times: 
It is going better with me although I 
have a little feebleness in my left leg, and 
no more of your frictions "in the direction 
of the heart." The beds are not as good as 
those in Auto Chir No. 7. I am in a little 



14 HOSPITAL HEROES 

draught from the window and no one thinks 
of putting a bed sock on my head. I have 
received some more pictures from my wife 
of the children but no one cares to see them. 
You would be pleased to see that the boy 
has grown taller than his older sisters now. 
I am well taken care of but you see this 
does not prevent me from thinking often 
of your hospital. 

I hear with pleasure that you have a 
ward of your own now. How happy you 
must be, alone and independent, no one to 
scold you any more. 

I begin to get up but must not leave the 
ward. My back is not all well yet. When I 
look at the end of the arm that is cut off, 
I wonder what my children will say. Then 
I remember what you told me about crippled 
bodies not being half so bad as crippled 
brains or hearts. I may go home soon, but 
will not forget you. I pray you to accept 
some cards of my native country and sur- 
roundings. 

Permit me. Mademoiselle, to thank you 
for the courage and goodness and tender- 
ness you have shown towards me and my 
wounded friends. I thank you with all my 
heart for coming such a long way to take 
care of us. I shake your hand cordially and 
cry loudly: *'Vive FAmerique!" 



THE LETTER-BOX 15 

That night when the rumble of artillery- 
seemed louder and the scratching of mice 
in the paper ceiling over my bed alarmed 
me even more than the guns, and the mat- 
tress felt harder than usual, I could not 
sleep for a long time, and so I thought 
about the letters. You can find rose-colored 
spectacles anywhere, they say, if you try- 
hard enough. The blesses have found mine 
for me, 

A few months ago I was comfortably- 
enjoying the cynical excitements and futile 
pleasures of what I considered life. Since 
then I have lived and worked and suffered 
among people who had been at the front 
so long that it was as commonplace to them 
as if they were only in a little town in peace- 
time, instead of in a very busy field-hos- 
pital seven miles from the firing-line. 

These letters make me realize that the 
work I am doing, however small it may be 
in comparison to the wholesale surrender 
of lives once belonging to individual minds 



16 HOSPITAL HEROES 

and hearts, is yet big enough to make me 
forget my endless discomforts. War is less 
exalting than the civilian realizes who takes 
his three square meals a day, comfortable 
house, and bombless nights of undisturbed 
sleep for granted. Death is unimportant and 
hard work makes one forget fear, but it is 
harder to endure the little discomforts be- 
cause they are always there to annoy when 
one is tired — the perpetual mud and damp- 
ness, the wind blowing down the pipes of 
the inadequate stoves and putting out the 
fire, the snow sifting in through cracks in 
the paper windows, the unvarying supply 
of potatoes, war-bread, and tinned food, 
and, worst of all, no real baths. 

The blesses make it all worth while and 
chase away the "cafard," that slough of 
despond when you feel you don't like to be 
out there at all and yet would hate not to 
be there. Luxuries seem contemptible when 
men are dying. One cannot be homesick 
when looking back is like seeing a view 



THE LETTER-BOX 17 

through the wrong end of opera-glasses, so 
small and insignificant. It seems unreal 
back there with all the hating and pen- 
and-ink fighting. Here, there is a wonderful 
"camaraderie," a fine feeling that joins all 
in a common cause, and makes up for the 
many things that are taken away. There is 
regeneration in knowing you can meet the 
worst and survive. I am happier here than 
I have ever been before because I am doing 
something where history is being made 
among people who have a contempt for 
anything not the bravest. We are doing a 
work into which no selfishness enters, and 
in which there is no restless wondering 
what to do next. 

Among the waste of bones and flesh that 
once were the physically fit of France, the 
things which each individual gives up count 
for little. Instead, there is a grim deter- 
mination not to waste any more time with 
death so near. I cannot understand how 
this work would ever harden one. Pity and 



18 HOSPITAL HEROES 

sacrifice must purify the whole nature. A 
courage comes out of the crucible, more of 
the soul than of the nerves, which lifts one 
above the terror, doubt, and pain. After- 
ward, when the great elation is over, one 
must have developed and the future will 
be better on account of it. ' 



CHAPTER II 

AMERICAN CRUSADERS 

AS soon as I realized that life in war- 
-^ ^ time must be either danger and ad- 
venture and active service, or safety and 
tedium and a passive helping to "win the 
war" at home, I made my choice and took 
my opportunity when it came. If some 
were giving their lives for the happiness 
and safety of the others, I could not stay 
behind and comfortably accept such a 
sacrifice. When so many are doing big 
things, I could not do little ones. I had to 
go out with them and risk everything for 
real service. If happiness and safety are 
worth such a price of blood and seK-ab- 
negation, I must not shirk, but pay it too, 
instead of leaving the hard work to others 
while I hide under some excuse and wait 
for them to "come marching home." 

19 



20 HOSPITAL HEROES 

The crossing was uneventful as far as 
submarine activity was concerned, but very 
interesting as to passengers. The steamer 
was crowded with people, many in uniform, 
every one with a mission. Here was no 
sluggish blood nor eyes blind to duty. There 
was an exhilaration in being one of such a 
company of brave people, some on diplo- 
matic errands, three hundred ambulance 
drivers for the Norton Harjes and American 
Field Service, aviators for the Lafayette Es- 
cadrille, canteen and Y. M. C. A. workers, 
and our hospital unit of doctors, nurses, 
and aides. 

Dreading a domestic brass-band farewell, 
I started off alone, having seen my family 
on the train for their summer instead. I 
was afraid that the good-by side of the 
boat might make me weaken and lose heart, 
so I left the waving crowd and found a 
corner on the upper deck, facing the ocean 
and unknown future that lay beyond it. 
Here in the rain, I made a circle of dead 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 21 

matches in a pathetic attempt to smoke 
and be a man, until the ship had left the 
harbor, and I had regained my courage 
enough to join my friends. There were 
other moments of self-doubt and depres- 
sion, but they were easily overcome after 
this first victory. There is a romantic ex- 
citement and personal courage in being de- 
tached from the e very-day life of home and 
habit. The thrill of being a part of this 
great war made me forget to be lonely or 
afraid as we sped nearer and nearer the 
danger zone. 

"I didn't know they were taking chil- 
dren over there." Looking around, I found 
my corner had been discovered by one of 
the ambulance boys. He was looking dis- 
dainfully at the dead matches. Having 
learned to smoke only a few months before, 
he was feeling very superior and grown-up, 
and it evidently hurt his pride to have me 
starting off on his big adventure, too. I did 
not reply to his taunt, so he went on: 



22 HOSPITAL HEROES 

"What are you doing here?" 

"Trying not to cry," I answered truth- 
fully. 

"You were silly to come," was his cold 
comfort. "What good can you do.^^ You 
should have stayed at home and married." 

"I didn't want to. I couldn't have been 
happy enjoying a selfish safety I hadn't 
earned. It was more a feeling than a reason 
that made me come." 

"You don't look very happy now," he 
remarked, as he lit a cigarette, preparing 
to stay and probe the matter further. 

"That's because I feel so useless and 
stupid among all these capable-looking 
people. But when we get over, I am sure 
I can help. I am to begin in a supply-room." 

"What is that?" 

"I'm not sure, but I hope to work out of 
it to a ward so I can wear a uniform." 

"Ever been in a hospital?" 

"Not very often." 

"You didn't train in one?" 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 23 

*'I helped in a baby clinic when they 
were short-handed, and I learned to take 
histories, temperatures. . . ." 

"But what do you know about wounded 
men?" 

"I commenced the Red Cross home-nurs- 
ing course, but it didn't have any wounded 
in it, so I thought the best way to learn 
would be in the midst of them." 

"Come and watch the steerage. That'll 
train you some for the men who come in 
from the trenches." 

There was another inexperienced but 
enthusiastic girl, who like myself was to 
start work in a supply-room. I will tell our 
story so that others, who feel useless but 
are anxious to do something that takes 
more of themselves than the little war- 
work games at home, may be inspired 
and encouraged by our experience. Inci- 
dentally, the demand for nurses was so great 
that neither of us were put in a supply- 
room. The other girl went to La Panne, I 



24 HOSPITAL HEROES 

might add, and had a ward of her own 
parallel to one managed by a trained nurse, 
doing the same work and gaining much 
praise from Doctor Depage and the ma- 
tron. Our school motto proved truer than 
we realized: "Not for our school but for 
our lives we learn." The things we had to 
learn this time were harder, but we were 
older and more eager. 

There was gun practice and boat drill, 
but except for much staying up at night 
looking for submarines and the fact that 
life-preservers were much in evidence, the 
life of the ship was as care-free as in peace- 
times. The decks were dark, but always 
gay with singing and the tinkling of uku- 
leles and mandoUns. One former glee-club 
star even played a tiny piano, undaunted 
by the darkness. These concerts stopped 
when the procession of blankets and pillows 
warned us that those who fled from a sleep- 
less night in stuffy staterooms, with all the 
port-holes closed by order, were about to 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 25 

try their luck under the stars. Staggering 
under their burden, they stumble along 
from one person to another, until finally, 
after groping in every direction, putting 
their hands in various eyes and mouths, 
they succeed in finding a little place for 
themselves, often remaining till six in the 
morning, when they are ruthlessly aroused 
by a torrent of water warning them too late 
that the decks were being cleaned. Then 
every one adjourns to the lounge or stairs, 
"shooting crap" until breakfast is served. 

We made a big adventure of it, and yet 
underneath our frivolous holiday exterior 
was the earnest hope that the adventure 
would ripen into a bigger service. If we 
laughed and danced and sang too much, 
it was to hide a little nervousness as to the 
immediate future, and an embarrassed self- 
consciousness that we were doing something 
hard and real in leaving our comfortable 
homes and going into a foreign, war-wrecked 
country. We were most of us quite young. 



26 HOSPITAL HEROES 

Those who are young enough and free 
enough to go are the lucky ones and, in 
spite of danger and discomfort, they are 
happier than those who must stay behind 
with the rumors and "Extras!" changes, 
regrets, and good-bys. We were to forget 
our troubles in the immensity of universal 
suffering and find out the real facts. They 
would have to believe what they were 
told, and wonder and worry. 

In the danger zone I slept on deck in a 
heavy coat thrust upon me by an ambu- 
lance boy, "so as not to die of exposure in 
a life-boat.'* I filled the large pockets with 
crackers, fruit, hairpins, and pictures of 
my family. Ever since that time, when I 
have been sent out alone to do anything 
hard, I have carried the feeling of taking 

somebody else with me. K even had 

a book so she would not be bored if we 
had to wait many days before being picked 
up by another steamer. 

I liked to lie where I could watch the 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 27 

water, so peaceful and harmless-looking. 
The phosphorus was well worth the trip, 
for with the lights out, it sparkled and 
danced along beside the boat in intensified 
splendor. The fresh air revived me after 
the month of June which I had spent in 
New York trying to be useful selling bonds, 
taking the census, rolling bandages, and 
knitting. The stars were reassuring, for they 
went on holding the world in place undis- 
turbed. It gave me a feeling of security and 
endurance to look up at them and know 
that they would go on and on through 
wars and men's lives without change. It 
makes one believe that some power guides 
the ship that speeds through the fogs with- 
out a sound of warning and crashes through 
the blackest nights without a light. No 
matter what wars and men may destroy, 
the world goes on held in place by a stronger 
force than they. 

I have often since longed for my little 
stateroom with trunks and bags piled in 



28 HOSPITAL HEROES 

front of bed and closets, making it difiBcult 
to move or dress, the carpet, seldom swept, 
covered with crumbs and orange-peel, and 
the baskets of fruit outside the door at- 
tracting flies and making people cross. It 
belonged to the first part of my real life, 
and I try to keep the sense of humor that 
made it seem so amusing instead of un- 
comfortably messy. 

"Come and have a look at France!" 
called one of the aviators, as he hurried 
from the dining-salon. 

We watched the waves our steamer made 
as they overflowed the banks of the river 
that took us to Bordeaux. Large swells 
swept up into fields of grain or pastures 
where cows were startled in their grazing 
and had to run away. Little boats at anchor 
were so disturbed that they capsized. The 
green banks and little farmhouses made it 
sad to realize that war had devastated just 
such peaceful scenes. Such a country was 
too beautiful to be ruthlessly destroyed. 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 29 

Next day we took a ride in a seagoing 
hack driven by a fat old man who fell asleep 
persistently whenever we stopped to look 
at anything, and had to be waked up in 
French. What I remembered of the language 
from my governess and school-days was 
just enough to make me misunderstood. 
My first luncheon was not a success, as I 
forgot what little I knew in the excitement, 
and asked for preserved apple-trees instead 
of plums, and was given ice-cream when I 
asked for a glass of water. When the waiter 
explained that he was not French but 
Spanish, I understood spinach and said: 
"Non, je voudrais petits pois." 

The ride through the city was depressing. 
So many closed houses, crape veils, and 
crippled soldiers ! Women were running the 
tram-cars, and a few children in black 
roamed through the quiet streets. Two art 
museums were open and contained many 
fine works brought from the Louvre for 
safety. On the whole, the art was rather 



30 HOSPITAL HEROES 

morbid and unhealthy. I liked the "pay- 
sages" best. They seemed to tell those who 
doubted that the faith that brooded over 
the farm-lands and countryside would not 
be destroyed by the apathy of the city. 
The cathedral was a rehgion in itseK. The 
spirit of France is kept alive by the quiet, 
humble people who burn candles at the 
altars of the big cathedrals and cover the 
shrines in the little country churches with 
photographs and prayers of "Protect my 
son." 

On the way to Paris we passed through 
soft, peaceful country with long, graceful 
lines of Lombardy poplars and chateaux 
high on wooded hills with wreaths of red- 
roofed cottages around them, like Edmund 
DuLac's fairy-tale illustrations. Women 
were working in the fields. Sometimes we 
passed gangs of German prisoners at work, 
the only discordant note in the landscape. 

Late in the evening we arrived in Paris. 
The head of our unit went to the seashore, 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 31 

evidently no longer responsible for us, in 
spite of having assured our families that 
we would be chaperoned most carefully in 
Paris. The understanding had been that 
we would remain there only three or four 
days while the head doctor inspected sev- 
eral French hospitals which were at our 
disposal in order to make the best choice. 

K 's brother met her and took us to 

his hotel, where we stayed three months 
waiting for further orders, unable to sign 
up with any other hospital, as we were 
enrolled with this unit for six months. On 
our way over, the American Red Cross had 
taken charge of all American units, and 
the French Service de Sante had nothing 
to offer us as near the front as we had 
hoped. 

In the meantime, we found work, some 
of us at surgical dressings, others at the 
Y. M. C. A., and the rest in a canteen at 
the Gare de I'Est, where we supplied the 
crowds of soldiers coming and going with 



32 HOSPITAL HEROES 

large, full-coursed meals. It was a turmoil 
of constant demands, everything to be 
done at once amid much shouting in French 
for more soup, bread, or plates, much burn- 
ing of fingers when the soup was ladled 
out into cups, and a weary arm that went 
on and on cutting large chunks of heavy 
war-bread. I was in charge of the first sec- 
tion and had to supply all the soup, hors 
d'oeuvres, bread and butter, as well as mak- 
ing change in "sous." It was like a Billy 
Sunday cafeteria, only not so orderly and 
clean. 

I was glad to have some work which 
kept me too busy to think and made me 
feel useful, and preferred it to surgical 
dressings, where each one had to sign her 
name at the end of the day with the number 
of compresses or bandages she had done. 
The strain of sitting still so long and the 
hurried feeling were too much for me to 
stand day after day. The canteen was better, 
though it was a disappointment to be so 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS S3 

far from the front where the only signs of 
war were high prices, poor bread, and the 
hum of aeroplanes overhead like great 
bumblebees. 

In the summer of 1917 the Paris air- 
raids were of little importance. We talked 
or slept through several without realizing. 
Seemingly cheerful people strolled uncon- 
cernedly up and down the boulevards, or 
sat at the little tables along the sidewalk. 
Shops were open, even those selling expen- 
sive gowns and jewelry. Many of them were 
closed at the beginning of the war, but re- 
opened when the proprietor returned with 
his wounded stripe. Some of the fashion- 
able hotels on the Champs-Elysees had been 
turned into hospitals, but others were doing 
business, the work being carried on by 
old men, women, Httle boys, or wounded 
soldiers who were no longer able to go to 
the front. These "reformes" were usually 
covered with medals as a compensation for 
the loss of a leg or arm. Vaudevilles, 



34 POSPITAL ; HEROES 

theatres, and operas were patronized by 
men on leave. It was not unusual to see the 
performers wearing the red ribbon of the 
Legion of Honor. The elevator-man at 
Morgan Harjes' had so many medals I hated 
to trouble him. Outside of Cartier's stood 
another war hero with a new face. 

A civilian was a rare sight. The few one 
did see were old men or foreign represen- 
tatives from Spain, South America, and 
Switzerland. Everywhere one saw the quiet 
efficiency and fitness of the English and 
American khaki, the elaborate glamour of 
the French and Italian uniforms, with here 
and there a Russian, Serbian, Belgian, Jap- 
anese, or Indian with his voluminous head- 
dress piled high above his dark face and 
flashing eyes. 

The Frenchwomen were usually in mourn- 
ing and went out rarely, but now and then 
one noticed one of the better class, sensi- 
tive and piquant, daintily dressed in wel- 
come contrast to the sober uniformity or 



AMERICAN CRUSADERS 35 

mistaken elaborateness of the Englishwom- 
en, with their pale-colored tulle scarfs and 
dark woolly suits. The Englishwomen are 
at their best in khaki, I have seen them 
repairing their own machines, undisturbed 
by snow, cold, or mud, quick and cheerful 
like boys. 

There were no cabarets, no music in the 
hotels or dancing, except in places which 
were frequently raided. One could have hot 
water only at week-ends. Monday and Tues- 
day were meatless, Tuesday and Wednesday 
were without pastry and candy. Restaurants 
closed at half past nine. The whole city was 
dark at that hour, and there was nothing to 
be had, not even a taxi. One was expected 
to economize light and go to bed early. 



CHAPTER III 

WITH THE THIRD FRENCH 
ARMY 

TTJST as I was resigning myself to the 
•^ railroad canteen for the duration of the 
war, one of my former school friends ar- 
rived in Paris on her way home for a rest 
after a year of nursing. She thrilled me 
with tales of her work in a French field- 
hospital seven miles from the German 
lines. I was reassured to find she still had 
her hair, teeth, and health in spite of the 
terrible stories that had been told at home 

to discourage me from coming. D was 

just the same after her hard work; if any- 
thing, more enthusiastic and alive. She 
arranged a meeting for me with the head 
of her Equipe, who by some lucky chance 
was in Paris that day. Arrangements were 
made for me to go to this hospital, as help 



WITH THE THmD FRENCH ARMY 37 

was needed for the hard winter ahead, and 
even an untrained person could be of ser- 
vice. 

It was not dijfficult to leave the other 
unit which had brought me over. In fact, 
I was released with pleasure. I think the 
head doctor would have liked to have been 
released from his own unit after such a 
long period of waiting, tangled up in red 
tape. Then began the task of collecting all 
the papers required for admission to the 
war zone, and several shopping tours for 
uniforms and heavy winter clothes. 

At last, armed with every sort of paper, 
I set off from the Gare du Nord wearing 
the military "tricolore" and an identity 
bracelet. While in Paris, I had been obliged 
to have two papers, one which permitted 
me to stay in France provided I did not 
change my residence, called a "permis de 
sejour," and the other my "immatricula- 
tion," a leaf from the register of all for- 
eigners. To these I had now added an Amer- 



38 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ican Red Cross card, a military nurse's 
*'livret" (a sort of diploraa to be signed 
at each place where service was done), a 
"carte d'identite," a "carnet d'etranger" 
which allowed a foreigner to enter the war 
zone, and a "bon de transport" so I and 
my baggage could travel free, like the sol- 
diers. Besides these, I had to have my 
American passport ever ready to show. To 
four of these were attached my photograph. 
I could not forget myself very easily, and 
would have been in great difficulties if I 
forgot any of my literature. Later, when 
on leave, I had another paper to show the 
railway authorities and the "mairie," an 
officially signed and sealed "permission." 
I have heard American aviators boast of 
leaving their French camp without per- 
mission, and "getting away with it" by 
waving chewing-gum coupons as they passed 
the guards. Of course, if caught, they always 
said they "did not understand," but I un- 
derstood so well that I was quite intimidated 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 39 

and trembled every time, worrying about 
my papers being "en regie." 

Two other "infirmieres" went with me. 
We left the train at Compiegne, where we 
were met by our "directrice" and one of 
the doctors, who had come by "camion" 
for suppHes, and would take us and our 
baggage the rest of the way. We had lunch 
in the Palace Hotel, opposite the chateau 
which was then used as Etat-Major for the 
French General Staff. I little expected that 
I would come here to live in February, 
while taking a course at the Carrel and 
Ambrine Hospitals, and have what the 
Tommy calls a "near squeak," my room 
losing its wall during an air-raid the night 
after I left for Paris. Nor did I dream that 
in April I would be sleeping in the deep 
caves under that chateau for protection 
during the bombing of the first German 
drive. 

The "camion," a large, uncomfortable 
motor supply-truck, rumbled over the road 



40 HOSPITAL HEROES 

carrying us ever nearer the front. The Aisne 
is a flat country of plains and river valleys. 
In pre-war days there had been many beau- 
tiful forests, but most of these had been 
destroyed. The Germans were driven out 
in March, 1917, and in their retreat made 
the land even flatter by shelling and burn- 
ing towns and systematically cutting down 
whole orchards. Farm implements were 
broken, cattle and horses killed. So com- 
plete was the work of destruction that 
nothing remained but a levelled landscape 
of roofless and windowless houses that 
looked like fempty boxes, to some of which 
the poor peasants had returned and were 
living in the ruins. At one place there had 
been a large factory, but only a few pieces 
of broken machinery remained, and near 
by were a few graves, with crosses of wood 
which gave the name, date, and rank of 
some dead soldiers. These graves seemed 
such peaceful spaces in the battle-scarred 
land and death such a grateful sleep for 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 41 

tired men that I did not feel as much pity 
for them as I do for those safe at home 
who shirked their duty and were deaf to 
the call. They are left so far behind with 
their flabby souls and sluggish blood living 
selfish lives, while they let others die for 
their safety. 

There had been little attempt at rebuild- 
ing, except rude huts of wood or tile. The 
chimney-stacks and kitchen ranges alone 
seem to have resisted the fire, as if, in de- 
fiance of war, they wish to show that the 
French home and "cuisine" will endure 
forever. We passed through a part that 
once had been No Man's Land. It looked 
as dreary as it sounds, a desert of tumbled 
stone, barbed wire, trenches, and dugouts, 
with here and there a sign to show where 
once had been a village. Some sullen Ger- 
man prisoners were working on the road 
as we went through this vast land of mud, 
treeless, houseless, pitted with shell-holes. 

I was glad to leave this ruined country- 



42 HOSPITAL HEROES 

side and arrive at the small village in which 
our hospital was located. This place had 
not suffered so badly, although its church, 
of the twelfth century, was only a pile of 
stones. Cugny had three little stores and 
several houses in which troops were billeted 
as they passed to and from the firing-line. 
The streets were always lined with rows of 
"camions." There were hedgerows along 
the roadside and quaint little farmhouses 
in the surrounding country. I was surprised 
to see children plajang about the roads as 
unconsciously as if they had not been with- 
in sound of the guns. The French peasants 
continue to live in their homes at any risk. 
If they are shelled one day, they hide in 
cellars or run away to a safer place, but 
always return. It is strange that there is 
no word for home in the French language 
when they are so home-loving, while the 
Germans who talk incessantly of their 
Vaterland are apparently quite as happy 
in any other country. 




d 



WITH THE THmD FRENCH ARMY 43 

The inhabitants always saluted our "tri- 
colore." Some of them had remained through 
the German occupation of the village. They 
told dreadful stories, and assured us that 
most of the devastation was done on pur- 
pose so that nothing of value would be 
left for the Allies. Many of them were crazed 
with shock and sorrow, and begged us piti- 
fully to find their daughters for them. The 
place was noticeably empty of young men 
and women. 

When the refugees came pouring into the 
"Gare du Nord" during the first German 
drive, months later, I recognized some of 
the people from Cugny. There were can- 
teens and even cots ready for them, and 
they sank down wearily with a dazed look 
in their sad faces. Train after train came 
in with the same huddled forms, each with 
a bundle of household goods, or treasures 
done up in a towel or pillow-slip. When 
they recognized me they nodded sadly: 

"Yes, we had to leave. We dared not 



44 HOSPITAL HEROES 

stay a second time. We knew too well what 
would happen." 

Our hospital was situated between the 
main road to the front lines and a railroad 
with an ammunition centre on either side, 
which means we were often under bombard- 
ment, especially when the Taube observers 
caught sight of troops marching to the 
front. From a little hill near us we could 
see, far away over the plains, the spire of 
the cathedral of St. Quentin, then in Ger- 
man hands, but spared, at least until they 
were forced to retreat. It seemed miraculous 
that it should be left while the rest of the 
country looked as if a giant mowing- 
machine had run across it. 

Some English canteen women, also at- 
tached to the Third French Army and 
stationed near us, gave concerts and va- 
riety shows. They gathered the talented 
ones from the passing troops, and it was 
wonderful to see so many able-bodied men 
after the dreary rows of hospital beds con- 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 45 

taining shreds of what were once the best 
men of France. After my first few weeks 
in the ward, I began to fear that there 
would be no more men left to fight. But 
here, crowded together in the "Theatre 
du Front" were so many it made me want 
to look at them all the time, although the 
performance was excellent. The first few 
rows were reserved for officers and doctors, 
but the rest of the seats were full of poilus; 
they stood even in the aisles and doorway. 
The talent was of the best. There were re- 
citers, humorists, a tenor, and a violinist 
who had left the Gymnase, Porte St. Mar- 
tin, and Cigale to fight for their country. 

A few nights after my arrival we enter- 
tained some of these canteen women at 
dinner. Afterward we went on a tour of 
the hospital, which was my first chance to 
see it. I had been too busy to find time for 
sightseeing. 

There are several different equipes, but 
the politics are so involved that I am satis- 



46 HOSPITAL HEROES 

fied with the knowledge that the hospital 
is divided into two main parts: one for 
the wounded and one for the sick. "Blesses" 
and "Malades" they are marked at the en- 
trance. There are many doctors to do the 
dressings and a few surgeons to operate, 
each with a staff of orderlies and French 
"ministerielles," women taken from other 
employments, like the mobilized men, and 
paid by the government. The French had 
few trained nurses at the beginning of the 
war, their hospitals having been managed 
by nuns. 

Our equipe, forty women of all ages, 
characters, and nationalities, was organized 
and is managed by an American woman. 
Fortunately, we are never all together in our 
barracks at one time, some being away on 
leave or recuperating. Half of us are Amer- 
ican, ranging from nineteen to fifty years 
of age, some unmarried, some married to 
Americans, some to French titles, and one 
deaconess. The other half are English mih- 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 47 

tary nurses and V. A. D.'s, a French 
countess, and a French-Russian girl with 
strong revolutionary ideas. Our work is 
in the wards, receiving-room, assisting the 
doctors in the X-ray and laboratory de- 
partments, and at the dressings and opera- 
tions, and superintending the work of the 
orderlies in the sterilizing-room. 

To the large staff of doctors are added a 
group of medical students, who are sent 
here to complete their training, which was 
interrupted by the war, and an "Equipe 
de Renfort" sent to help during attacks 
when the work is heavy. I have sometimes 
felt that I had more "majors" than blesses, 
as these new doctors are constantly visiting 
the wards in search of "the arm that came 
in this morning," or "the head of last 
night." As there are so many heads and 
arms and every kind of wound coming in 
all the time, it is difficult to find each doc- 
tor's special case for him. I soon acquired 
a habit of greeting any casual visitor with 



48 HOSPITAL HEROES 

pad and pencil ready for orders, never sure 
who might be a new doctor. The medical 
students were another trial, as they would 
crowd around a bed while the surgeon lec- 
tured to them, keeping the blesse exposed 
in the coldest weather, and worrying him 
by discussing his case freely. 

The hospital is a town of its own, with 
a railroad-station from which the blesses 
are sent to the interior as soon as they can 
travel to make room for others who are 
constantly arriving from, the trenches. Rows 
and rows of sheds stretch away on every 
side, connected by plank walks. The cor- 
ridors have floors of earth, and suggest 
subterranean caves or catacombs, as they 
are dark at night. There are twelve wards, 
wooden huts, connecting the corridor on 
each side. Each has room for forty-six or 
fifty beds. The officers have a ward of their 
own, and the Arabs and German prisoners 
are isolated. 

The installation is quite remarkable con- 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 49 

sidering the inaccessibility of our position, 
and the chance of the hospital being moved 
at any time to follow the army. There is 
a large receiving-room or "triage," heated 
by steam-pipes and stoves, an X-ray or 
"radio" with motor-cars attached carrying 
the dynamo for this apparatus and supply- 
ing electricity for the whole hospital, also 
a sterilizing and operating room, and two 
"salles de pansements" for the dressings 
not done in the wards. Supplies sent by the 
"Service de Sante" and American Red 
Cross are kept in another wooden hut. 
There are offices for the two medecin-chefs, 
a pharmacy, laboratory, and "gestion," 
where the administrative work is carried 
on by militarized priests and their assis- 
tants. 

At the end of each ward are two little 
rooms, one used as kitchen by the orderlies, 
where the head, a corporal, has his desk 
and attends to the charts, special diets, and 
keeps the other little room, used by the 



50 HOSPITAL HEROES 

"infirmiere," supplied with material for 
the dressings, medicines, blankets, and 
linen. He sits at his desk (usually writing 
letters !) and superintends the work of the 
two orderlies who are supposed to keep 
the ward clean, sweeping and washing the 
floor twice a day, wait on the blesses, and 
serve the meals. 

Most of the wounds are of such a nature 
that the blesses are put on "petit regime," 
which means only liquid food, usually "po- 
tions" from the pharmacy — "calmante," 
"todd," or "vin de quinquina," to be taken 
every two hours or a bottle finished in a day. 
The two meals from the hospital-kitchen 
and the breakfast coffee and chunk of bread 
are not enough for those who need nourish- 
ment, so I turned part of my little room 
into a kitchen where I made chocolate 
every day at two o'clock, which I gave with 
a bit of bread to dip into it. 

The orderlies bring cold tea, coffee, and 
various mixtures called "tisane," "tilleul," 



WITH THE THmD FRENCH ARMY 51 

and "limonade," which I supplement with 
egg-nogs and milk from a near-by farm. 
I even squeeze the juice from jam-jars into 
water to make a variety of cool drinks for 
the feverish. The little alcohol-lamp is con- 
stantly burning either for cooking, boil- 
ing syringes and needles, or just heating 
water for hot-water bags, as it takes too 
much time to wait for the orderlies to get 
it. No one is supposed to enter this little 
room without my permission, and yet I 
noticed the 95 per cent alcohol disappear- 
ing rapidly and an empty bottle was found 
under one of the beds. 

I came willing to do anything, but was 
relieved to find orderlies and even a few 
maids to help with the washing and bed- 
making. My training began under an ener- 
getic American woman who had a ward 
of forty-eight beds, and was temporarily 
in charge of the emergency ward as well 
until that "infirmiere" returned from "per- 
mission," Fortunately, there were only 



52 HOSPITAL HEROES 

twelve cases in the emergency ward, and the 
wards were opposite each other. There 
were three orderhes and a maid in each, 
but we were hurriedly busy every minute. 
I started the first day with temperatures 
and pulses, and was grateful to the baby 
clinic for the only training I had ever 
had. 

It was the first time I had even seen a 
hospital ward, except once when I had 
gone to visit a friend who was recovering 
from an operation for appendicitis, and I 
got into the accident ward by mistake. The 
sight had frightened me so much that I 
fairly ran through. This time, however, I 
could not run. There was so much work to 
be done and so many things for me to 
learn that I had no time to be upset. When 
I saw how cheerful they all were, reading 
or writing, talking, or playing games with 
each other, they reminded me of the little 
crippled children I used to teach on a boat 
in the East River in the winter or take for 



WITH THE THIRD FRENCH ARMY 53 

rides to the seashore in the summer, all 
hurt and disabled together. Even those 
with their faces bandaged smiled "Bon 
jour" with their eyes. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BLESSES 

"rpHERMOMETERS ! Always a ther- 
■^ mometer!" the blesses groaned as 
I started my afternoon round. In the morn- 
ing, before they were thoroughly awake, 
it did not bore them so much. But by after- 
noon, when those who could get up were 
strolling about or trying out their new 
crutches, and the rest were playing cards 
or the "jeu des dames," a game something 
like our checkers, all of them were feeling 
too well to see the necessity of a ther- 
mometer. However, it was a military rule 
that the charts for temperatures and pulses 
should be complete, with the dressing or 
operation marked as well. 

It is quite a difficult task to bring each 
one back to his bed at four o'clock in the 

afternoon, connecting each man with his 

54 



THE BLESSES 55 

chart, and not skipping any one. There 
are usually guests and much talking and 
confusion. The "phono" is going like mad, 
playing march after march, the favorite 
music of the poilu. None of the pulses beat 
in time with the music, so I have to count 
out loud. But if they see I am rushed with 
new arrivals, operated cases demanding 
much attention, and various interruptions, 
they hurry back to their places so I will not 
be late. They like to tease, but never hurt 
or exasperate, and realize I must finish 
before the doctors' visits and the "soupe," 
the universal word for anything to eat, just 
as "pinard" means wine to them. 

Some of the names were so hard for me 
to pronounce, and there were several with 
the same one, that to simplify matters we 
made up nicknames. It was always a relief 
to reach the bed of "Le Boxeur," for a 
wound in his left leg kept him from wan- 
dering away. He also had both hands band- 
aged; one was so mangled we were in doubt 



56 HOSPITAL HEROES 

about saving it. I have to take his pulse in 
his forehead, and he hkes to delay me by 
chewing to confuse the count. He has to 
be fed and is quite helpless, and yet can 
always joke about something. I hardly 
know whether to laugh or cry when he pre- 
tends to box with his big bandaged hands. 

"Camouflage" was next to him, with 
white bandages across his face, making him 
look a part of the sheet. He was a tall "mi- 
trailleur," and showed me a photograph of 
his pretty fiancee in her Alsatian costume. 

"Tell me. Mademoiselle Marraine," he 
would always say anxiously, "do you think 
she will care for me when I return, a poor 
mutile with a changed face? She always 
told me how handsome I was, so much more 
so than all the other men. Maybe she will 
marry Jean after all, when she sees what 
they have done to my face, those 'sales 
Boches' and these doctors. la, la, what 
a terrible war ! " 

Before I had learned all their names and 



THE BLESSES 57 

wounds, I always had to admire their photo- 
graphs. As soon as a man is brought into 
the ward, and has recovered sufficiently 
from his operation, he begins fumbling in 
his "musette," or if it has not been brought 
in yet, begs the orderly to hurry and find 
his bag of treasures, so he can "show Made- 
moiselle" his wife or fiancee or children. I 
always worry as to how these wasted bodies 
and amputated men will be received when 
they go home. 

"I do not need a marraine, for I have a 
fiancee," said Davesne, limping along on 
crutches. "See how fast I can go now. Will 
you speak to me if you see me selling news- 
papers in the streets in New York.^*" He is 
six feet tall and very clever, and I hope 
for a better future for him, and yet I cannot 
help wondering what he will do, as I watch 
the empty pajama leg swinging from his 
stump. They all want to come to America 
after the war. I do hope some one will find 
work for them. 



58 HOSPITAL HEROES 

"Mademoiselle, you are a thief," called 
"Rigolo" when I had progressed several 
beds beyond him. "I accuse you of stealing 
four sous !" 

This was a never-failing source of merri- 
ment. When I am not noticing, some one 
will put a joke in my pocket. As the doc- 
tors' visits come right afterward, there is 
much stifled amusement when I put my 
hand in my pocket to find my pad and 
pencil to take orders, and pull out a cham- 
pagne cork or a pipe. Every one claims it 
as his own, and I am called a thief by many 
ferocious men with mustaches bristling in 
feigned wrath. 

"Where is 'Le Moqueur ' ?" I asked, look- 
ing about for a handsome boy of nineteen, 
who had come in with a shoulder wound 
which did not depress him in the least. He 
was almost too gay, teasing everybody all 
the time, and usually getting into trouble. 

"There he is ! See, beside the stove ! He 
is trying to make the thermometer go up." 



THE BLESSES 59 

I rescued it just in time, threatening to 
give him one for a whole hour as punish- 
ment. They were so expensive and easily 
broken. I was often the guilty one when 
I started off on a cold morning with hands 
so numb the thermometer would slip 
through as I was shaking it down. But 
"Monsieur le Thermometre" had the worst 
score of all. Every time I gave him one, I 
said a mental good-by, for he invariably 
found a new way of breaking them. How- 
ever, he was so eager to help me with my 
work that I could not be angry. He never 
tired of rolling cotton for the dressing-car- 
riage, or sharpening pencils, though his leg 
was shot in several places. Each time he 
went to the "radio," a new piece of shell 
was discovered, necessitating another opera- 
tion. 

"Too much stomach," said "Soixante," 
who was trying to learn English from a 
book I had given him. He had been run 
over by a motor-truck, and worried more 



60 HOSPITAL HEROES 

about himself than any of those wounded 
in battle. His temperature was a matter 
of grave importance to him. He had a pulse 
of sixty for several days, and when I found 
it upset him for the whole day to have 
more or less than "soixante," I would mark 
it to please him whether it was fifty-eight 
or sixty-two, as he was not serious enough 
to matter, and yet it influenced his whole 
attitude toward life if he could see a straight 
line running across his chart. He had a 
violent relapse when, in my absence, some 
one marked sixty-four, and almost cried 
with joy when I returned and somewhat 
guiltily wrote: "Soixante." 

Many of them guess and bet what their 
temperatures will be. If they have a fever 
and go up very high, I try to finesse and 
put their chart where they cannot see it, 
but the doctor usually spoils my plan by 
waving his arms excitedly, saying: "Oh, it 
goes up !" 

The unhappy mend slowly, and so I 



THE BLESSES 61 

try to find out the special worries. They 
are more than mangled bodies to be shud- 
dered at, quickly cared for, and passed hur- 
riedly by. Each day men are brought in 
who have kept the enemy back and saved 
those behind the lines. After such an effort, 
what does it matter how dirty or querulous 
they may be ? I cannot do enough for them, 
and I try to make a little time as I work 
in order to know each one separately with- 
out being partial, and find out their special 
worries and sorrows. I like to take care of 
them as individuals, not as cases to be 
tended professionally and then left to 
brood. 

"What is the great 'Samson' crying 
about .'^" I whispered as I approached the 
largest man in the room, who had been 
there a long time with an abdominal wound 
which mended slowly. He was often hys- 
terical and I had caught him several times 
tearing open his dressings, to scratch the 
wound. 



62 HOSPITAL HEROES 

"He has received no word from his 
parents for over a month,'* the man in the 
next bed explained. 

I told him neither had I and I was so 
much farther away from my home, but one 
must be brave. He paid no attention until, 
remembering he had eaten no lunch, I 
made him some hot chocolate, his favorite 
delicacy. Even this he refused until I calmly 
fed him with a spoon. This made the others 
laugh, and soon he rallied and took the 
cup himself. 

We see the morale of the army at a time 
when it is unfair to judge. Men come in 
delirious or hysterical, and they do not 
know what they are saying. Pain makes 
them say things they would not even think 
of before they were brought to us down and 
out. I have heard them swear at the doctors 
during dressings, call the orderlies and 
ambulance-drivers "embusques," and say 
it is only a "fad" for Americans to come to 
France, that they will not really fight. But 



THE BLESSES 63 

the fact remains that whether these men 
wanted to or not, they have been heroes 
in the midst of all the horror and danger 
for four years, fighting for the safety of 
those behind the lines, and I cannot help 
feeling grateful to them, so grateful that 
it obliterates every other feeling. They 
have been superior to the rest of us, no 
matter how low they may sink afterward 
from the pain of their wounds or home- 
sickness. In a few weeks these same men 
will be mending a hole in my sweater or 
working away at a silk table-cover which 
they weave on a little frame to give to me 
or sell when they return to the city. I took 
some cases of lost families to a special de- 
partment of the Red Cross, and was glad 
to hear from the men later that their lost 
had been found. 

"Monsieur le Crocodile" is always cry- 
ing about imaginary hurts. One day, it is 
because they have hurt him so much at 
his dressing, that he must cry, "O, la, la. 



64 HOSPITAL HEROES 

how my leg hurts!" for hours afterward 
until one hopes they will not dress his leg 
again for some time. Again, he will be in 
tears because, "Look, Mademoiselle, there 
are two whole days since my dressing has 
been changed. O, la, la, what a miserable 
life ! I am not being well cared for. They 
forget me." 

However, he is easily pacified with a 
pair of brand-new bed-socks "sent all the 
way from America for 'M. le Crocodile,' 
because his crying was heard far away." 
But, poor man, his home is in German 
hands. 

"You have been smoking too much," I 
announce as I come to "le Bebe." 

"Please do not scold, * Petite Maman,'" 
the youngest begs, "but bring me a hot- 
water bag, for I am so cold." Hot-water 
bags were very scarce. I had only five rub- 
ber ones for my forty-eight beds, and a 
few stone ones which the blesses called 
"soixante-quinze" because they were shaped 



THE BLESSES 65 

like the shells for their famous cannon. 
The others seemed to understand that "le 
Bebe" was a spoiled child and therefore 
privileged to receive more attention. I tried 
not to be partial, but he was so young and 
was suffering so much from two shattered 
legs which the doctor was trying to save 
by various experiments of Carrel treat- 
ments and plaster casts and steel plates 
screwed to the remaining bone. Finally, 
fearing sepsis, he had returned to the Carrel 
system of irrigating the wound, but "le 
Bebe" was so sensitive that the injections 
every two hours made him cry out with 
pain. 

"Toto" pretended to be asleep, hoping 
I would pass by and not disturb him. He 
got his name the first day when I asked 
him for "the pulse," and evidently used 
the French slang for "cootey." After search- 
ing for several minutes while I waited, 
much mystified, he had said: "I cannot find 
the 'toto,' Mademoiselle." The others in- 



66 HOSPITAL HEROES 

sisted he had one, so the name clung to him. 
Fearing to make another mistake, I asked 
for "the hand" next time. Whereupon he 
shook my hand solemnly, saying: "Com- 
rades, in spite of everything." 

"Mademoiselle, will you be so good as 
to ask 'Monsieur le Major' when he comes 
if I may have a cachet of aspirin? My 
head aches." This formal request came from 
"I'Amoureux," so called because he had 
wakened from his operation ardently mak- 
ing love. It was so unusual for ether to affect 
any one in so amusing a manner, that he 
entertained the whole ward, to his great 
embarrassment later, for he was a most 
formal, retiring young man who spent 
most of his time quietly puzzling over an 
old edition of the New York Times. Every 
one begged for the laughing ether, but no 
one else had such a humorous after-effect. 
Too often they came back from an opera- 
tion in tears. 

"Don't forget the 'ventouses' this eve- 



THE BLESSES 67 

ning, please," said "Grandpere." He always 
wants cupping, whether the doctor has 
ordered the treatment or not. He is such 
an old man, I humor him when I have 
time, but he is so thin that not many of 
the little glasses will stay. We make quite 
a game of it, even the orderlies clump around 
the bed with their heavy sabots which they 
always forget to "leave at the door on en- 
tering the ward." Just as I think I have 
put on a good one that will stay, and the 
blesses cry, " Qa y est ! " off it rolls, clattering 
along the wooden floor under the next bed. 
Nothing daunted, "Grandpere" shouts: 
"Encore!" He is never satisfied to have 
a few good ones but must always have 
"Just one more!" even if they clatter 
around him like hail-stones. I am so excited 
when one does take, that the blesses cheer 
and the orderlies clank back to their work, 
muttering: "That helps, that does good." 
We call the purple marks that are left 
medals for valor in the hospital. Once I 



68 HOSPITAL HEROES 

forgot to take them off when the ten min- 
utes were up, in the confusion of having 
several things happen at one time, and 
poor " Grandpere " remained bent forward 
uncomfortably for nearly an hour without 
a word of complaint. I thought he would 
be cured after this experience, but next 
day he began asking for them as usual. 

The "Artiste" was copying one of Otho 
Cushing's drawings of a Red Cross angel 
from an old Life. When I stopped to admire 
it as I interrupted his work prosaically with 
a thermometer, he said: 

"I am glad it pleases you. I have made 
it for you. Mademoiselle Marraine, for you 
are our angel." He went on elaborating this 
theme while I took his pulse. 

I was glad the "Sergent," who ruled as 
king in the ward of poilus, called me at 
that embarrassing moment to show me 
some flowers some one had given him. He 
was so pleased with these few flowers that 
he called it a "fete." The ward was so bare 



THE BLESSES 69 

and drab, they liked to see me wearing a 
few flowers, or decorating the walls with 
holly or mistletoe. 

"Gamin le Gaspillage, stop walking 
around with your thermometer, and look 
at this great chunk of bread I found on 
your little table." 

The orderlies were supposed to keep the 
bedside tables clean, washing the cups, 
bringing fresh towels and napkins, and re- 
moving crumbs of food and cigarette ashes. 
I had found so many pieces of bread left 
after each meal that I made a point of look- 
ing over these tables. They teased me about 
not wanting any bread to be wasted, asking 
me if I had been raised in Germany. 

"We always take a big piece, hoping it 
may taste better than last time. What 
matter if it goes to waste ? The government 
pays." 

They evidently thought after a lifetime 
of thrift, the government owed them this 
privilege. "Gamin le Gaspillage" was the 



70 HOSPITAL HEROES 

worst offender, as he left bits of cheese and 
butter as well as untouched pieces of bread. 
He always gave them to me laughingly 
when he saw me making a round in the 
cause of tidiness, saying: 

"Look, here comes the poor Mademoi- 
selle gathering up her dinner. Here, my 
poor child, is a crust for you." 

"Here is a nice book for you to read. 
Mademoiselle," said "Monsieur le Valet." 
He spent most of his time reading Balzac, 
which he called "delicious," and looked like 
an artist with his pointed beard. His cul- 
tured voice and literary taste seemed above 
his profession. I was surprised when he 
asked me to take him back to America 
with me, offering as a special inducement to 
work three months gratis because I had 
dressed his foot so well. When a wound was 
not very serious, the doctors left it for me 
to dress. Although the "Valet" had lost 
his big toe, it was considered "peu de grave" 
and turned over to my care. He is usually 




> 

u 
as 



03 -^ 

a — 









ffi 



THE BLESSES 71 

in a heated argument with his neighbor, 
"Monsieur le Sculpture," who has the foot 
of his bed raised on bricks hke a pedestal, 
and the whole of one leg in a plaster cast. 

All the blesses insist on keeping the rough 
bits of shell that have caused them so much 
trouble. After every operation, I must wash 
the blood-stained "eclat," tie it up in a 
compress, and hang it where they can always 
see their precious souvenir. The "bavards" 
like to talk about their wounds, though 
they never mention the battle-field, and 
show me a pocketbook with a shell-hole 
in it which saved their life. 

I never discovered the origin of the "Be- 
gonias." They are the ones who walk about 
and help with the work, making the beds 
and feeding their helpless comrades. Their 
leader was the cause of my first attempt at 
dentistry. I was used to putting drops in 
eyes and ears that hurt, but was puzzled 
when the chief of the " Begonias " ap- 
proached me, turning his mouth inside out 



72 HOSPITAL HEROES 

to show me a large cavity in his back tooth 
that was giving him great pain. I took him 
into my office at the back of the ward, and 
with all the others craning their necks to 
watch the performance through the little 
window, pushed a tiny bit of cotton soaked 
in iodine into the hole. Iodine is my stand- 
by remedy for all ills, but it was so hard to 
use it this time, that his chin was stained 
with trickles of brown and had to be 
scrubbed hard with Dakin, the best bleach 
I knew, to the amusement of the ward. 
Ever after, the chief of the "Begonias" had 
only to approach me with his mouth wide 
open, pointing inward and upward, to get 
a burst of laughter. 

The "comedians" keep their end of the 
room cheerful with an unending supply of 
funny stories, told in a "patois" which I 
do not understand. From what I know of 
French wit and humor, it is probably just 
as well I do not understand their "badi- 
nage," which is a bit "rosse," and yet I like 



THE BLESSfiS 73 

to see them amused, no matter what they 
laugh at. "We must be gay," said one who 
had looked upon horrors untellable. This 
spirit is the hope of the future. 

"Robespierre," a perfect likeness, opened 
the door for me when the thermometer 
session was over. 

"Meyran wanted me to tell you, Made- 
moiselle, that there is a beautiful sunset, 
when you have a little moment to come 
and look at it." 

Meyran, my favorite orderly, always 
cleaned the basins on the door-step where 
he could watch the sky, and tell me when 
an aeroplane from the camp not far from 
us was performing feats worth watching 
or a Boche observer flew so low one could 
see the black cross on the wings. He also 
knew how much I liked to see the sunset, 
after the dreary sameness of the wards, and 
the flatness of the surrounding country, 
which made everything seem so small and 
insignificant. There is something about flat 



74 HOSPITAL HEROESj 

country which enhances the beauty of 
sunsets. I suppose the total lack of any- 
thing beautiful in this place allows the sun 
to set with no detracting competition. It 
always rested me to gaze into that en- 
chanted space, radiating joy unspoiled by 
"the thunder and moaning of war." Some- 
times, the whole sky was misty with pastel 
colors, and sometimes the heart of the west 
burned like a great open fireplace. How I 
would have appreciated a blazing wood- 
fire in the drafty ward instead of the little 
round stoves that made so much dirt and 
so little heat ! 



CHAPTER V 

LIFE AT THE FRONT 

TET no one trained in a big New York 
-*-' hospital suppose we had a furnace to 
heat the wards or our own rooms or run- 
ning water and bathrooms. We had barely 
the necessities for a hospital. Our buildings, 
being temporarily constructed, were little 
protection against the snowy weather of 
December. 

The cold was penetrating and more pain- 
ful than sunny, dry zero weather in New 
York. The wind blew down the stovepipes, 
putting out the fires, and almost tearing 
the roof off. Snow sifted into the ward 
through cracks in the ceiling and around 
the windows. I had to rearrange the beds 
every day, pulling them into the centre 
at all angles to avoid drips, giving the room 
a demoralized aspect. Every blesse had a 

75 



76 HOSPITAL HEROES 

cold. The "caporal" whittled a stick for 
me to use when I painted chest after chest 
with iodine each night. They did not hke 
to see my fingers stained, as they always 
were when I took the cotton or a compress 
in my hands. So I flom-ished the stick like 
an artist's brush, and amused them by 
starting ojff with initials or a picture. Those 
unavoidably in drafts had bed-socks of 
various colors on their heads. I envied 
them in their beds like hibernating animals, 
snuggled under nine heavy blankets. 

My hands would become quite lifeless as 
I made the tour of temperatures the first 
thing on a cold morning, or held icy bot- 
tles for the doctors as they did the dress- 
ings. When I tried to warm my numb 
fingers by literally placing them upon the 
stove, the blesses would cry out in protest 
and rub them warm for me so I would not 
have "engelures." 

I dreaded each trip to my little room, for 
the back door was opened so often by the 




.in <U 



a S 






LIFE AT THE FRONT 77 

orderlies on their various errands that the 
floor was a sheet of ice, and yet I had to 
stay there a great part of the time to prepare 
the dressing-carriage, steriHze needles and 
syringes, clean instruments, make drinks, 
and enter the doctors' orders for treat- 
ments, dressings, and operations, the ar- 
rivals and departures of the blesses and 
to which equipe each belonged, neatly in 
French in a note-book kept open for the 
night nurse to add her remarks. How I 
would have appreciated hoofs ! My un- 
gloved hands were a pathetic purple, and 
in spite of the blesses' care, often cracked 
and bleeding, and my nose was a most un- 
becoming red. I wore two pairs of heavy 
stockings and stuffed cotton inside my 
tennis-shoes, which kept popping out at 
the sides like a fringe or the pads horses 
are given when they interfere. And yet 
through everything I had to keep up the 
morale of my ward. I had read somewhere 
about ''hospital wards, cheerful and pleas- 



78 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ant, with trim, nice-looking girls as nurses, 
whose air of coquetry was deemed helpful 
to the patient." This was more difficult 
than one would suppose, but the blesses 
helped a lot. In fact, I was never quite 
sure whether I was taking care of them 
or they of me. 

The first time I helped at a dressing, a 
little boy of seventeen, known as "le Petit 
Parisien," because he was typical of his 
birthplace, saved me from uttering a cry 
of horror and running away. He was one 
of the happiest in the ward, and seemed 
to be quite free from suffering or worry. 
Therefore the shock came unexpectedly 
when I first took off his bandage and re- 
vealed a right hand frightfully mangled 
from which the fingers hung down fastened 
by a mere thread. He held it up without 
a quiver for the doctor to dress, and when 
he saw my expression, though there were 
tears in his eyes, he smiled at me reassur- 
ingly. 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 79 

"Monsieur le Coiffeur" could not forget 
his original profession, though he had served 
three years as "marechal des logis," he 
always informed me in a distressed tone 
when my veil had slipped to one side or 
had some of the black from the stovepipe 
on it. They made so much fun of my com- 
fortable, rubber-soled shoes, that I only 
dared wear them on the coldest days when 
they were more lenient in their discipline. 
I considered myself responsible for the 
morale of my ward and took it as a per- 
sonal affront when any one had the "ca- 
fard." During the harrowing moments when 
the doctors were doing most painful dress- 
ings, I tried to wear a mask of cheerfulness 
as I gave the doctor compress after com- 
press to cover a large expanse of mangled 
flesh, or poured ether or "menciere" on the 
wound. I did not want them to see in my 
face how serious and horrible it was. 

Perhaps my great sympathy for them 
and longing to keep them from suffering 



80 HOSPITAL HEROES 

atoned for my inexperience. I was not 
treated as a novice and was grateful for 
the impression given to the blesses that I 
had done it all many times. It gave me 
confidence. When in doubt about anything, 
I would admit "I must ask the doctor," 
using the feeble excuse that "things are so 
different in America." 

In England or America, I would not have 
been up to the standard, but in France I 
was better equipped after my two months' 
apprenticeship than most of the French 
"infirmieres" and "ministerielles," for it 
seems only English-speaking races have 
professionally trained nurses. The work in 
French hospitals has been done chiefly by 
the English, and the Frenchwomen who 
have given up other occupation to answer 
the needs of the country, but who are as 
new to the work as voluntary workers like 
those in our unit. There is so much to be 
done, and so few really strong enough to 
do it or able to support themselves. Trained 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 81 

nurses are rather scornful and sceptical in 
their remarks about untrained aides being 
sent to the front, but if they are unable 
to give their services without pay the work 
must be done by those who can and are 
willing to learn, and do as they are told. 
Otherwise some of the blesses would be 
left to the orderlies, who are not very clean 
or conscientious. Trained nurses are only 
going on with their usual work with an 
added zest and excitement given by for- 
eign service and war, but no one should 
criticise those who give their services, and 
sometimes their lives, for a work to which 
they are not accustomed. Many women 
are slaving night and day who never knew 
what it was to suffer a discomfort. French 
countesses who were helpless without a per- 
sonal maid have turned up their sleeves 
and dressed wounds reeking with the un- 
bearable odor of gangrene poisoning. Doc- 
tor Carrel, the famous surgeon of the Rocke- 
feller Institute, who has been promoted 



82 HOSPITAL HEROES 

by the French Government to the rank 
of Commander of the Legion of Honor for 
his discoveries of methods of blood trans- 
fusion, conservation of hving tissue, graft- 
ing bones, and treating wounds, which have 
been of such universal benefit to the 
wounded, has praised the work of volun- 
tary nurses highly. His own nurses are 
Swiss "bene voles." 

When the American Red Cross did send 
some professional army nurses to help 
during an attack, the "medecin-chef " sent 
them away, saying they were only "lemon- 
trees standing in the wards." They could 
not speak French and refused to take tem- 
peratures as we had been doing all the 
time. Triumph for the untrained nurses, 
even if I do say so when I should be modest ! 
However, it is something to be proud of 
to be able to aid a doctor willingly and 
unquestioningly wherever one is needed 
and to care for wounded with tact and 
sympathy that comes from culture if not 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 83 

with trained professional skill. The need 
in our hospital was so great that I had to 
give hypodermic injections and do some 
of the dressings, which American aides 
and English V. A. D.'s are not allowed to 
do even after months of hospital experi- 
ence. During my apprenticeship I was some- 
times left alone in the ward, so it was not 
very hard a little later to have charge of 
one of my own. 

For a while I had a maid to help me as 
well as the caporal and two orderlies, but I 
preferred to give the baths and make the 
beds myself. Though they were her own 
countrymen, she was rough and careless 
and refused to do anything but sit around 
on the beds on Sunday and gossip. When 
I reminded her that if men could be wounded 
on Sunday they could be taken care of as 
well, she flounced out of the room saying 
I was "too young to give orders." I never 
let her come back again. The blesses com- 
plained that she had only bothered, walk- 



84 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ing so heavily it hurt their wounds, and 
talking so much. 

I never had a regular "day off," nor did 
any one in our unit. We went on duty at 
eight o'clock each morning, with two hours 
off in the middle of the day for a walk 
and lunch, but if there was a great deal 
of work to be done, we would only take 
a half -hour. The English always made time 
for tea, but that was my hour for tem- 
peratures and doctors' visits. We left the 
wards at seven o'clock, when night duty 
began. 

One of us did night duty for a week alone, 
being replaced in her ward or daytime work 
so she could rest. In busy times two of us 
would take the same night, one until mid- 
night, the other after midnight. If there 
are many new arrivals and much operating, 
the night nurse calls for assistance, and 
whoever is in charge of the operating-room 
hurries over to help the surgeon on guard. 
Usually night duty consists in making a tour 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 85 

of the wards every two hours to give the 
Carrel injections or other treatments and 
hypodermics ordered, recording what she 
has done in the book kept by the nurse 
in charge of each ward. It takes courage 
to go on duty all alone at night in the dark 
with only a flash-light or lantern. Bombard- 
ments often occur, and there are more 
deaths than in the daytime. 

The shed in which our unit is billeted is 
near the road, where we can see the troops 
passing by like a river of gray steel hel- 
mets. The French troops march silently, 
except for their heavy boots clumping along 
the hard road, but I often longed for the 
sound of a military band to drown out the 
continuous noise of the traffic. Armed mo- 
tors and the big guns rattled by, mingling 
their din with the heavily lumbering motor- 
lorries, the clattering hoofs of the packed 
horses, and tooting horns of staff cars that 
shot past at top speed. They would billet 
in our little village, so one day the streets 



86 HOSPITAL HEROES 

would be filled with picturesque "Blue 
Devils," and the next with a swarthy Al- 
gerian regiment. Sometimes young boys 
would be brought in to the hospital from 
the trenches, and other times the wards 
would fill up with gray-haired men. 

When we did have time for a short walk, 
it was like stepping into an illustrated 
Sunday paper or into a Paihe Weekly of 
"Somewhere in France." Behind us on the 
road and ahead of us were millions of men 
in blue, almost the same height. It seemed 
unreal, like a stage-setting with ruins on 
every side, and yet we were actually in it, 
marching along with men who would soon 
be in the first-line trenches. From a distance 
the long, monotonous roll of artillery, like 
surf beating on the seashore, made it all 
too real. 

It always seems to rain at the front, as 
if the desolate plains and dreary boom of 
the cannon and continual sight of suffering 
are not enough to make one realize there 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 87 

is war close by. In cross-country walks 
one sometimes stumbles against piles of 
shells, evidently forgotten, concealed in the 
most unexpected places. I found a croix 
de guerre in the ruins of a town. The ribbon 
was faded, and the dates were 1914-1916 
with a star. Having no way to identify 
the man who had earned it, I could not 
return it to his family. 

One day, when the French were preparing 
to attack, we heard that there were some- 
tanks in a field not far from us. Every one 
stole a few minutes from work to see them. 
I was fortunate enough to go with a nurse 
who had been decorated by the general 
of the blesses in her ward with a "croix de 
guerre fourragere." Through her influence 
we were admitted to the meadow where 
about fifty tanks were stationed. The ofiicer 
on guard let us climb into one of the middle- 
sized ones, which looked like a big green 
frog with its camouflage of mottled green, 
and guns peering out at each side like eyes. 



88 HOSPITAL HEROES 

In it we went down-hill into the mud and 
climbed up again. 

That evening the captain of the tanks 
had dinner with us, being a cousin of Ma- 
dame G . Our one recreation consisted 

in staying up late and entertaining officers 
on their way through Cugny after our 
day's work was done. The splendid gold 
braid of their uniforms contrasted oddly 
with our poor dining-room. 

Lunch and dinner (or dinner and supper 
— I never was sure which was which) were 
served in a wooden hut similar to those 
used as wards, except that it was divided 
into three parts: one-third for the "femmes 
de menage" (maids who did our housework 
and helped in the wards), one part for 
kitchen, presided over for a time by a real 
chef from the Ritz, who had come to us 
wounded and was kept as cook during 
his prolonged convalescence until the gen- 
darmes arrested him for bigamy. We did 
not care how many wives he had, if he 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 89 

could only have stayed with us, cleverly 
disguising the poor quality of the food with 
his delicious sauces. 

The last and largest part was our dining- 
room. A long wooden table with a long 
wooden bench on each side, and an arm- 
chair for the "directrice" at the end, give 
the impression of a refectory, until we are 
all there. Then it becomes the wildest scene 
of confusion. We have no table manners, 
and startle our guests by repeatedly rising 
from the table. In one corner is a stove on 
which we make toast as we eat, climbing 
over the back rail of the bench frequently 
to see how it is coming along. We heat over 
what has chilled if we are late, or run out 
to the kitchen to see whether the maids 
are having better food than we are, which 
is often the case. Whereupon we bring it 
back with us and put it down proudly in 
front of the oflficer of highest rank. All 
around the walls are large crates and pack- 
ing-cases of food in tins, and hospital-sup- 



90 HOSPITAL HEROES 

plies, beyond which and overhanging them, 
out of reach, are shelves of books and maga- 
zines. The windows look almost too civilized 
and pathetically dainty with their chintz 
curtains. 

Work and the open air that penetrates 
our walls as if we were living outdoors 
make us hungry even for the monotonous 
diet of a military hospital. Tinned food, 
horse-meat, red wine that tastes like vine- 
gar, mouse-trap cheese — we are so hungry 
we eat it all. If the soup is even more taste- 
less than usual, we grate cheese into it or 
make it snappy with a touch of Worcester- 
shire sauce. If the pudding is the same we 
have been eating for two meals a day, 
week after week, month after month, 
we dress it up with a cover of jam. What 
would we ever do without jam.^ Three 
times a day we spread it over uneatable 
bread and forget that it is gray instead of 
white, and that we noticed sawdust in the 
crust. 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 91 

When there are guests a special effort 
is made. Some one goes to the nearest town 
and brings back cakes, pate de foies gras, 
and champagne. But the table is always 
set in the same manner: two white enamel 
plates, one on top of the other; a knife, 
fork, and spoon. This and nothing more for 
the whole meal. It takes skilful management 
to put the right things together. You must 
finish every bit of your soup, for the meat 
and potatoes will taste better on that plate 
than the pudding will on the same plate 
with the vegetables. Each one keeps her 
napkin in a little linen bag hanging behind 
her part of the bench, and usually keeps it 
indefinitely, forgetting to send it with the 
rest of the laundry. 

We are billeted in a hut like the ward, 
with paper ceilings (full of mice) instead 
of wood, and windows of yellow paper in- 
stead of glass. No one opened these windows 
at night. There was no need with the wind 
blowing up through the cracks in the floor. 



92 HOSPITAL HEROES 

Instead, we shut them tighter with cotton 
stuifed along the cracks. Each one has a 
little space of her own with sheets for walls, 
so that the general impression on opening 
the door is of a Pullman done in white. 
Our rooms were quite cheerful with bright- 
colored chintz concealing trunks, shelves, 
and rows of hooks, and a blanket on the 
floor for a rug. After the war I shall never 
want to see a trunk, after living without 
unpacking ever since I got on the steamer. 

For furniture we have wooden tables, 
camp-stools, an electric light, and a gas- 
mask. Some of us had had experience camp- 
ing out, but we had never roughed it in 
snowy weather. We stood it very well, not 
even getting tonsillitis, bronchitis, or grippe, 
as one does in steam-heated houses. I sup- 
pose we were all in good condition when 
we came, after living in comfortable homes, 
well nourished. 

I don't believe in the strict army system 
of giving the men so many hardships be- 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 93 

fore they are sent to the front. It may 
harden some of them, but it weakens others 
who might otherwise escape illness if they 
had arrived in perfect condition in the war 
zone, instead of being worn out needlessly 
with poor food and discomfort. Every one 
who has to go under fire should have all 
the care and comfort he can get before he 
comes way out here. He needs all his re- 
serve strength and nerves intact for the 
strain. However, my business is to take care 
of the soldiers afterward and not before. 

Sometimes, though tired, I have gone to 
a party, spurred on by the prospect of dif- 
ferent food (I must admit) more than enter- 
tainment. One night the French com- 
mandant of an ambulance section stationed 
in our vicinity sent his car for those of us 
who had been invited for dinner at his 
poste. Even the cold ride was a treat after 
being housed for a long time. We dined in 
the cellar of a ruined chateau and could 
hear the guns plainly. The walls were crum- 



94 HOSPITAL HEROES 

bling. One of them had fallen only the day 
before and killed a man. 

The dining-room was decorated with 
pictures from illustrated papers. Bathing- 
suits were the last things I had expected 
to see out there. I sat between a prince 
chauffeur and an American "Loot" (giving 
him his own rendering of his rank). Neither 
of them having a thing in common, not 
even language, only their work, which one 
does not discuss at parties, I was glad when 
we began to sing. Such strange connections 
and acquaintances are formed at the front. 
All sorts of people you would never meet 
at home are so friendly and sympathetic. 
There is a mutual interest and respect that 
I have found nowhere else. 

On All Souls' Day, "le jour des morts," 
we placed fresh flowers upon the little 
graves in the cemetery near our hospital. 
They were surrounded by a railing of 
painted wood. Over each grave was a cross, 
hung with a fancifully decorated wreath 



LIFE AT THE FRONT 95 

and an identity disc and "tricolore" in the 
centre, and sometimes the kepi, coat, and 
boots. It did not seem pathetic or sad, but 
a fine thing that they should be lying there 
at rest in their native soil which they had 
tried to defend with their lives. 

From there we went by camion to a 
lonely hilltop near Flavy-le-Martel. Here 
the American aviator McConnell, who 
wrote "Flying for France," was buried 
where he fell when shot by the enemy. A 
monument with parts of his aeroplane and 
gun commemorated the spot, in the midst 
of what had once been a large apple- 
orchard. Every tree had been systematically 
cut down by the Germans in their retreat, 
the branches pointing in the same direction, 
like rows of graves. 



CHAPTER VI 

AN ATTACK 

'T^HERE is a maid who brings us hot 
■■- water and breakfast. Not the pohte 
third-person kind that says deferentially 
"Madame est servie," but a comedian of 
the May Vokes variety — only more so. 
She starts off noisily in all directions at 
once, arriving nowhere in time, singing 
loudly or telling herself what chore she 
is going to do next, though in spite of her 
own constant reminder she invariably for- 
gets to do it. "O quelle horreur !" she cries, 
when she does anything awkward, which 
is most of the time. 

Nevertheless, I like Germaine, the much- 
abused, for she has a big heart. In this 
atmosphere of efficiency in which I am 
living there is little time for feelings, and 
I was drawn to Germaine when I found 



AN ATTACK 97 

her huddled up on the floor by the stove 
crying over a dead cat. In return for a few 
kind words I am one of the favored few 
who breakfast in bed, and how I appreciate 
a hot drink before I have to get up and 
dress in a place colder than outdoors be- 
cause there is no sun. I burned my face 
and froze my back trying to get less cold, 
my one consolation being the fact that I 
could not get any colder. I would never get 
warm enough to catch a chill. However, 
the thought of the men in the trenches 
pulled me through the coldest weather and 
made my hardships unimportant. 

I acquired strange habits of stowing my 
clothes under the covers every night, and 
postponing a bath for the middle of the 
day when one could thaw out a little and 
begin to feel one's feet again after hobbling 
painfully about on them all morning. Even 
then it was hardly a bath, for the rubber tub 
was too small. It tipped over so easily that 
it was safer to take it to an empty room near 



98 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the big stove that kept the water heated for 
all of us. It was warmer here, but one had 
to hurry, for Louis was always coming in 
to keep the fire going, and you could only 
lock the door by pinning the sheets together 
and shouting "Don't come in!" whenever 
you heard his manly tread. 

Germaine was supposed to waken me at 
seven o'clock, but usually arrived at half 
past or later, calling cheerily: "Seven 
o'clock." The French always lie if they 
think it will give more happiness than 
telling the truth. When she is too busy to 
toast the impossible war-bread, she does 
one side anyway. The coffee is boiled and 
quite tasteless, with a lump of condensed 
milk at the bottom of the cup. I never get 
that far, and am consequently very hun- 
gry when lunch-time comes. This coffee and 
the bath will keep me modest when after 
the war I may think myself extraordinary. 
The memory of these humble details will 
save me from becoming insufferable. 



AN ATTACK 99 

One morning Germaine burst into my 
room, pulling the sheet wall apart in a place 
that was not the doorway and upsetting 
my wash-stand. She seemed more flurried 
than usual, if such a thing were possi- 
ble. 

"Good morning, Mademoiselle," she be- 
gan hastily, tripping over the blanket rug 
and putting my breakfast-tray under my 
chin with a plunge. "Listen ! Do you hear? 
It is the French who attack to-day. Poor 
boys ! You can hear the glorious seventy- 
fives ! Quelle horreur ! Will this frightful 
war never end ! Now I must get the hot 
water for Madame de B ." 

When wide awake, I could plainly hear 
the peculiar bark of the "glorious seventy- 
fives," and could distinguish the "arrives" 
from the "departs." During my hasty 
dressing, a strong cannonade shook the 
barracks, and made the stovepipes creak. 
Many new faces, or what remained of faces, 
greeted me when I entered the ward. 



100 HOSPITAL HEROES 

"Beaucoup d'entrants !" said the caporai, 
looking sadly at the new arrivals. 

"We need more aluminum for our rings 
and 'briquets,'" said Jean Biscay, as he 
worked away at his handicraft of making 
little cigarette lighters and rings out of 
pieces of old shell. "'Messieurs les Boches' 
are filling our order now." 

The ward was very quiet all day out of 
respect to the "entrants" who were in 
great pain and needed rest and sleep. Sev- 
eral hemorrhages had to be stopped, and 
many poor souls crying from shock and 
exhaustion had to be comforted. The work 
was heavy and I had to be several places 
at once, and do many things at the same 
time. The orderlies and "Begonias" were 
a valuable assistance and, thanks to them, 
no one was neglected. 

All day the roar of artillery shook the 
wooden building. All day the stretcher- 
bearers shuffled in and out of the ward 
carrying men to and from the operating- 



AN ATTACK 101 

room. Some of my walking delegates were 
sent into another ward, where there was 
no nurse, only orderlies, to make room for 
those who needed more attention. Some- 
times the brancardiers left their burdens on 
the floor, and hurried back to the operating- 
room, or triage, where ambulance after am- 
bulance arrived leaving more and more 
wounded. There they would lie until the 
orderlies had time to lift them into a bed, 
which I was making while its former oc- 
cupant collected his things to move out. 
At last the ward was full, and still the bran- 
cardiers appeared with their stretchers and 
the caporal or I had to turn them away: 
"Pas de place." 

There seemed to be every kind of wound 
except an aseptic one. Most of the dress- 
ings were done in the ward, several doctors 
of different equipes often arriving at the 
same time and adding greatly to the gen- 
eral confusion. There were many hypo- 
dermics to be given to stimulate those who 



102 HOSPITAL HEROES 

had lost a great deal of blood or needed to 
be braced up after their operation. The 
gassed cases had an oxygen inhalation every 
five minutes from a Zeppelin-shaped bag. 
The most serious gassed cases were sent to 
the " malades," where fourteen died in one 
day. Cradles had to be placed over mangled 
limbs to keep the blankets from pressing 
too heavily. Swollen faces full of bits of 
shrapnel had to be washed gently. Some of 
the mouths were full of blood, and the eyes 
of one man had to be pushed in again now 
and then. There were men whose hair was 
gray at thirty-five, and boys younger than 
I with faces of old men. The German shells 
must have been poisoned, as the men had 
all received prompt attention at the "poste 
de secours" in the front lines before coming 
to us, where they were immediately oper- 
ated, and yet several amputations were 
necessary on account of gangrene. 

I am always afraid to tell them, but wait 
for the doctor to break the sad news when 



AN ATTACK 103 

they have sufficiently recovered. Some of 
the men tell sad stories. One "fusilier" said 
he did not mind losing his leg. 

"There is no one to care, Mademoiselle," 
he explained with a quiet desperateness. 
"One time I had a wife so devoted that the 
first year of this miserable war she dressed 
in man's clothes and came to see me at 
the camp, just before I went into the 
trenches. But that is over. The war was 
too long. She grew tired of being always 
alone. The waiting bored her. She is now 
with a Spaniard who makes munitions and 
money, while I fight and lose my leg and 
get little pay. It is the war. Mademoiselle, 
and one must not expect justice. There is 
nothing but death to look forward to." 

He was only thirty-two, and though 
wasted, his hands were well shaped, and 
his face was still good-looking, with sensitive 
mouth and refined features. He was very 
talkative and feverish after his operation. 
It seems he enlisted as a private for socialis- 



104 HOSPITAL HEROES 

tic reasons. How abruptly war cut him ojff 
from a career and happy home life! And 
how many others like him ! So many had 
wives; even the boys of seventeen wore 
wedding-rings proudly, and all waited anx- 
iously for the daily visit of the " vague- 
mestre " with his letters and parcels. 

For a field-hospital, the installation is 
quite complete, though rudimentary. The 
compound fractures with open wounds are 
suspended in Doctor Blake's apparatus. 
Most of the doctors use Doctor Carrel's 
system of irrigating the wounds. The ap- 
paratus consists of a glass flask of one litre, 
filled with a solution of Dakin, and fastened 
to a post attached to a part of the bed 
nearest the wound. A long rubber tube at- 
tached to the lower opening of the flask 
is joined to the ends of the drains by little 
glass tubes. The drains are perforated dif- 
ferent lengths (5, 10, or 15 cm.) and from 
one to four are used according to the size 
of the wound. One end is tied with a string 




t« o 

s s 

Oh OJ 



O 



AN ATTACK 105 

so the solution may distribute itseK instead 
of going right through. There is a metal 
clasp on the long tube to keep the liquid 
from flowing except when necessary, every 
two hours, when it is opened for as many 
seconds as there are drains. The idea is to 
keep the wound disinfected by keeping it 
moist. 

If a man has several wounds to be treated 
in this way at the same time, the same 
flask may be used with several connecting 
tubes joined to the main one, or his bed 
can be surrounded by posts in convenient 
places, making it look very festive with 
two or three pink balloons around. 

Assisting at the dressings is the most in- 
teresting part of my work. It is like a game 
of jackstraws, picking up each instrument 
and handing it to the doctor without touch- 
ing anything. At first the sight of the wound 
and the suffering of my own blesses, a mo- 
ment before so cheerful, and now in such 
agony, was hard for me to watch, but soon 



106 HOSPITAL HEROES 

I became so absorbed in the dressing, and 
in giving the doctors the various things they 
asked for in French, things I had never 
seen or heard of before, that it took my 
mind off the pain of the blesse and the horror 
of the open wound. I was too busy to think. 
No anaesthetic is given, although some of the 
dressings are ahnost operations. Pieces of 
tissue or hgaments are sometimes cut away, 
sending a man out of his head with the 
pain. When several dressings are going on 
at the same time, the ward is almost un- 
bearable with the cries and moans and 
the abominable odor of gangrene. The doc- 
tors are usually very gentle, even when 
rushed during a day of attack, and talk to 
the blesse as they work, calling him "mdn 
pauvre vieux." Bits of clothing, mud, and 
even flowers are taken out of some of the 
wounds as well as shrapnel and jagged bits 
of shell. 

The carriage must be furnished with 
sterilized instruments and supplies enough 



AN ATTACK 107 

for several doctors and dressings at a time. 
Afterward there are blood-stained instru- 
ments to wash, maybe one with a piece of 
skull fastened tightly to a jagged edge of 
the instrument, a piece of some trepanned 
head that will ever after be half-witted be- 
cause of the loss of that little scrap of bone. 

However, I would not care to be in the 
"salle de pansements," where dressings are 
done all day in rapid succession. It would 
be worse than an operating-room, where, 
no matter how terrible the work may look, 
the man is not suffering, but under an 
anaesthetic. In the ward there are so many 
different things to keep me busy and occupy 
my mind. There are moments when every- 
thing happens at once, as on the day of an 
attack, extra work as well as the daily 
routine. 

When the Carrel treatment is used, the 
wound is washed with a solution of Dakin, 
or a liquid soap containing zinc, lime, and 
glycerine. Sometimes chloramine paste is 



108 HOSPITAL HEROES 

used at the dressing for a day or two, elim- 
inating the necessity for the two-hourly 
injections. The wound is then covered 
with vaseline compresses, which can be 
removed without tearing, and large pads 
of both kinds of cotton, the absorbent 
next the wound and the non-absorbent on 
the outside. These are held in place by 
moist bandages or a wide bandage pinned 
around the body if the wound is in the back 
or abdomen. 

The solution of Dakin is a powerful dis- 
infectant, as it succeeds in cleaning wounds 
even when the dressing is not done in proper 
Carrel style. I have sometimes noticed 
drains put in with the perforations on the 
outside, so that although some of the solu- 
tion soaks through to the wound, most of 
it stays in a puddle in the bed. Often the 
two kinds of cotton are not arranged cor- 
rectly. When done in the right way, it takes 
only four days to disinfect a fresh wound 
and fifteen for an old one. 



AN ATTACK 109 

On the day of an attack the poverty 
and shortcomings of our hospital become 
more apparent. When my blesses write me 
from other hospitals that they are not as 
well taken care of as at Cugny, that the beds 
and food are not as good, I am surprised 
and anxious about them. Sometimes our 
poverty is appalling. I have seen horses 
that had better blankets than those on 
the beds in our wards. When the laundry- 
machine, which is in Compiegne, quite far 
away, breaks, we go weeks without clean 
linen for the men. Sheets are only changed 
when there is a great emergency, not when 
they are gray with cigarette ashes or dirt 
from those who insist upon walking bare- 
footed about the ward. There is a small 
reserve supply in the emergency ward when 
this shortage of laundry occurs, kept espe- 
cially for the "grands blesses" who have 
hemorrhages, or wounds of such a nature 
that their beds must be changed several 
times a day. 



110 HOSPITAL HEEOES 

The highest proof of the French civiHza- 
tion is found in the characters of these 
blesses, farmers, taxi-drivers, plain work- 
ing men, simple country boys, who are 
never too hurt or too faint to murmur 
their thanks for every small attention. If 
they thought I was tired they would say 
they were perfectly comfortable instead of 
having their beds made over, or an alcohol 
rub, or any little comfort. In the midst of 
torture and death they are still cheerful 
and unselfishly try to help their "cama- 
rades." Hot-water bags, little pillows for 
filling up uncomfortable places in the bed, 
and special luxuries, of which there is but 
a scant supply, are quickly offered to the 
latest "entrant" or "opere" when they 
are carried in delirious or moaning with 
ether or pain. Even those who would rather 
read quietly or sleep, would let the "phono" 
play noisily by their bedside for the pleasure 
of the others, if I did not take it away. In- 
stead of making men brutal, war seems to 



AN ATTACK 111 

have made them very gentle and kind to 
one another. 

I was hurrying back to supper after the 
busy day of the attack when the nurse in 
the emergency ward stopped me on the 
way past her door. 

"Oh, please stay in my ward a few min- 
utes," she begged in a distracted way. "The 
orderlies have not come back from their 
supper, and I have to tell the doctor about 
one poor man who is dying. I can't leave 
the ward alone. Do watch them until I 
get back. It won't be long, and you'll help 
a lot." 

The "salle d'urgence" was even a more 
depressing sight than my ward had been. 
In the faint light, the men looked ghostly. 
There was no sound but an occasional 
moan or cry. Now and then a delirious 
blesse would lean forward in his bed and 
shout imaginary orders, or some one else 
would begin whispering softly, supposing 
his wife was there. Except for these mo- 



112 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ments, the suffering goes on silently with 
lips set tightly together and sad, patient 
eyes alone showing what pain there is be- 
hind the stoicism. Most of them had several 
wounds, abdominal, pierced skulls, lungs 
shot through, and compound fractures of 
the legs. When one man had several of 
these, there hardly seemed enough flesh 
left to keep him together. They were kept 
alive with numerous injections of saline 
solutions, camphorated oil, ether, and 
strychnia. Often it was hard to find a place 
to insert the tiny needle, so covered was 
the body with bandages, iodine stains, and 
holes where former injections had been 
giv'en. Many of the wounds necessitated a 
change of dressing, and the whole bed re- 
made every few hours. Another man had a 
chest wound, the dressings of which had 
to be undone and ether injected every four 
hours. Though the nurse of this ward was 
assisted by a maid and three orderlies, she 
had more to do with twenty beds than I 



AN ATTACK 113 

had without a maid and forty-six. Each 
of these men could have kept a nurse busy- 
by himself if only to supply his constant 
requests for a drink. 

There was nothing special for me to do 
but watch that no one fell out of bed, so 
I sat by the stove and read about each 
case. Some of the wounds were so inde- 
scribably horrible and numerous that for 
the poor blesse's sake, I almost hoped that 
he would not survive. Now and then I got 
a drink for some feverish one or held the 
hand of a delirious poilu who thought he 
was a general. The warmth of mine or the 
electricity that goes from one being to 
another seemed to calm him, and he would 
drift off to sleep. 

The man who was dying was the most 
pathetic case of all. His body was perfect, 
and he of all the mangled ones should have 
been allowed the precious gift of life. Six 
feet, of strong build, he lay tied in bed 
with an ice-bag over his head which he 



114 HOSPITAL HEROES 

was trying to push away. His hands and 
arms became so purple and marked where 
they were tied, I had to unfasten them, 
preferring to stand over and watch that 
no harm come. An " abri " had fallen on his 
head and he was evidently trying to re- 
move it. It was dreadful to stand there 
and watch him dying, powerless to help 
him. Whoever discovers a cure for shock 
will give something marvellous to the world. 
This man died a few hours after I left. 



CHAPTER VII 
UNDER FIRE 

^ I^HE electric switch that hghts our 
-■- sleeping-barracks is turned off at 
ten o'clock, so that silence is enforced as 
rigorously at that hour as at a boarding- 
school or in Berlin. Not a whisper was 
heard, only the occasional turning of a 
page or crackle of a paper showing that 
some sleepless one was trying to read by 
candle-light. In the bitter winter weather, 
when the cold hurt so one could not sleep 

right away no matter how exhausted, B 

and I pulled the dividing sheet away from 
between our beds and made chocolate, 
pantomime fashion, in the middle of the 
night. Our "directrice" teased us after- 
ward in Paris by telling every one that she 
was kept awake every night at the front, 
not by bombs but by the continual stirring 

115 



116 HOSPITAL HEROES 

of chocolate. However, she took pity on us 
now and then, when December was at its 
coldest and the four little stoves were mak- 
ing much soot but no heat, and sent us to 
bed with something more potent to make 
us sleep. I have skated at home in zero 
weather against a biting wind, but I never 
felt as cold as I did that winter in the Aisne. 
We were always pushing our beds to a dry 
part of the room, away from the snow that 
sifted in. I wore more clothes at night than 
in the daytime, when, unfortunately, I had 
to look civilized. 

It is hard to say which was more uncom- 
fortable, the cold which was always with 
us or the bombardments which happened 
now and then. When troops were passing 
through on their way to the firing-line, a 
Taube observer would report their position 
to the air-raid authorities; or when the 
moonlight enabled them to see the posi- 
tion of the ammunition centres on either 
side of our hospital, or just without any 



UNDER FIRE 117 

special reason, the enemy planes would fly 
over our heads and drop bombs. 

The first time they came since my arrival 
in the war zone I was glad to stay under 
the covers and my bed seemed a safe, pleas- 
ant island in a wild, storm-swept sea. The 
noise was most alarming, like a thousand 
thunderstorms, and the clamor of the maids 
in the next barracks added to the terrifying 
sensation of being under fire. Our windows 
were covered with heavy black curtains so 
the room was absolutely dark. I tried to 
pretend I was at a play. There was some- 
thing sheltering about the darkness, like a 
heavy curtain wrapped around to hide and 
protect one. 

The bombs seemed to be right overhead, 
and the sky full of screeching, swishing 
whiz-booms and whangs. Between the 
crash of a bomb, one could hear the pop- 
pop of the "mitrailleuses" on the aero- 
planes, showing that the French were there 
to protect us, and more distant the loud 



118 HOSPITAL HEROES 

boom of the* antiaircraft guns with their 
questioning "Warum?" The aeroplanes 
were so low over our heads that we could 
hear, in rare pauses, the hum of their en- 
gines, even distinguishing the French from 
the German. The patter of shrapnel on our 
roof like rain made it seem all too realistic 
for a play. 

The next night my curiosity made me 
get up and watch from underneath a bit 
of overhanging roof. It is really the noise 
that terrifies. It was a wonderful though 
dreadful sight. The sky was full of signal- 
rockets and star-shells. Three big search- 
lights pointed right over our heads, groping 
now and then like arms, but returning ever 
to the same place above us. The bombs 
came with a loud crash and the "eclairants" 
shells burst with a blaze of light. 

On a moonlight night when the ground 
is covered with snow, a bombardment has 
a terrible beauty like giant fireworks. The 
stars mingle with the rockets and star- 



UNDER FIRE 119 

shells and signal-lights. The noise of the 
unseen antiaircraft cannon and machine- 
guns on the planes are like thunder in the 
mountains. It seems as if all the sky were 
alive and fighting a war too big for man 
to finish. 

There is an exaltation about being under 
fire. The realization that any minute may 
be the last, that each crash may mean 
the end of life, makes one full of a desire 
to work hard with a final burst of energy 
to make up for past years of idleness and 
the things one might have done, making 
the last part of life at least worth while. 
There is even a gladness and pride that 
one's own courage and skill are being used 
at such a time of danger and need. 

One can grow so accustomed to the dis- 
tant cannonading and roll of artillery that 
they seem to go on like corks popping at a 
cafe, or thunder rumbling far away. The 
uncanny shrieks and deafening bangs of 
a bombardment are another matter, but 



120 HOSPITAL HEROES 

even these noises seem less terrible if one 
gets up and watches them. 

An air battle in daytime is very interest- 
ing and so high above and far away that 
it is not alarming. There may be some 
danger from falling shrapnel, but never- 
theless we go to the door and look up at 
them. The planes are so high we can only : 
see the puffs of smoke from the "mitrail- 
leuses," the French puffs being white and 
the German black. These puffs of explod- 
ing shell look like soft, fluffy clouds, and 
when occasionally one does see the aero- 
plane, it looks like a dragon-fly. The blesses 
watch these battles with great excitement, 
calling out advice and instructions to the 
aviators. 

"There, he goes ! He escapes ! Stupid, 
follow him ! Look, they leave one French 
aviator alone with three Boches ! What is 
the matter with them? There, good, they 
got that Taube ! See, he falls ! Bravo !" 

There are three large observation-balloons 



UNDER FIRE 121 

near us, one German and two French. One 
day one of these French "saucisses" was 
surrounded by four black puffs of smoke. 
No French aeroplane came to the rescue 
and the great balloon began to descend 
slowly, a mass of flames, with a trail of 
smoke. The man escaped from his burning 
elevator in a parachute. 

I went to the front lines the night before 
Christmas in an ambulance. Having heard 
there would be no attack, we took a road 
forbidden in daytime, right to the trenches. 
We went first through the small ruined 
town Flavy-le-Martel, with its roofless, 
windowless houses looking like ghosts in 
the snow. Here and there chimneys rose 
against the dark, moonless sky, like arms 
reaching for help. The next little ruined 
village was Jussy, chiefly remarkable for 
its camouflage hanging over the river and 
along its banks like banners of "Welcome 
to Our City" or "Vote for Wilson." 

Something of that first strange thrill that 



122 HOSPITAL HEROES 

had been with me when I began nursing 
at the front, but which had slowly vanished 
through the blessing of getting used to 
things and being constantly among people 
who took it all as a matter of course, began 
to return and seize me with renewed vigor 
as we sped nearer and nearer to the Ger- 
man lines. Something stronger than my will 
had adapted me to my new life, and I could 
not feel above a certain level. I had come 
to the conclusion that seeing so much 
that was hideous and horrible and feeling 
sorry to the utmost extent of my capacity 
had made me immune to any future ex- 
citement or enthusiasm. But out here 
something stirred and quickened my heart 
again, and I was glad to feel a thrill of 
excitement. I forgot that I was tired and 
that the ambulance bumped along uncom- 
fortably, that the cold wind was piercing 
through all covering. 

After passing the village of Montescourt 
we entered a strange, unnatural country. 



UNDER FIRE 123 

quite empty. There was no stir, because 
there was nothing to stir. It reminded me 
of the poem of "The Walrus and the Car- 
penter": 

"You could not see a cloud, because ' 

No cloud was in the sky; 
No birds were flying overhead — 
There were no birds to fly." 

The snow stretched away into the dis- 
tance on every side like the Great Salt 
Lake, melting into the horizon in an in- 
distinguishable mist of land and sky. It 
was such an endless expanse of blank white- 
ness that it made one feel at the end of 
life or the beginning of eternity. One seemed 
about to fall over the edge of the world 
into nothing but space. 

It was a land cut off from the rest of 
the world. Somewhere people were still 
dressing up and going to parties and worry- 
ing about the stocks. But here there was 
no past or future, nothing but space and 
shell-holes. 



124 HOSPITAL HEROES 

We did not go into the trenches, as it 
was forbidden for nurses to ride to the 
front Hnes in ambulances, and we were not 
disguised except for the fur caps we wore 
instead of veils. But we did get out and 
look at the shell-holes, and learned the 
difference between a hole twenty feet wide 
made by what the Tommies call a Jane 
(12-inch) and a "Jack Johnson," and one 
known as a "Woolly," deep enough to 
drown a man. 

On the way back we passed dreary 
columns of troops returning from the 
trenches. I felt so sorry for those other 
lines of men trudging out to relieve them. 
Stiff with cold, even in the car, tired and 
aching from a big day's work and the jolt- 
ing ride, I wondered if anything was worth 
all this. It seemed so futile, all this struggling 
and misery in order that one army of frozen 
men could take some snowy, uncomfortable 
holes in the ground away from another 
army, equally wretched, fighting for acres 



UNDER FIRE 125 

of snow! It was, as Barbusse says, "one 
great army committing suicide." 

I could understand why Joffre's men 
stayed by their fires in spite of the advance 
of the Germans. Our barracks were such 
a cold prospect to return to, that I believe if 
I had seen a big roaring fire on the German 
side of that cold, white plane, I would have 
walked right up to it and refused to leave 
until I had thawed out thoroughly for the 
first time since winter came. 

I wondered if the war was trying to turn 
the world into a dead, burnt-up place like 
the moon. And yet overhead were the same 
stars that I had watched with such faith 
on the steamer only a few months ago. 
Only a few months, and yet how long it 
seemed and how little I had then known of 
war ! The very thought of my blind enthu- 
siasm and innocent eagerness made me feel 
old and very tired. 

I had discovered that life so near the 
roar of the guns and groans of the wounded 



126 HOSPITAL HEROES 

was a blind existence. The fatalism of the 
front is what makes the ghastliness bear- 
able. The past is so very far away and the 
future so uncertain that there is only the 
present to cling to and make the most 
of. It is hard, but you somehow stumble 
along, "fed up" but "sticking it." Living 
on the edge of eternity this way raises one's 
working efficiency to a higher rate. Life 
increases in value as its moments decrease. 
When strong men cry and hold your hand 
like children lost in the dark, you cannot 
leave them. You must stay and work and 
comfort and cheer and help all you can 
until the light comes. It may be your last 
chance. 

Homes and lives may be lost, but while 
one can serve there is something left to go 
on living for. Service brings its own peace 
even in the midst of war. It is the only 
religion that remains in the suffering. There 
is no hardening in hospital work if one 
can only put enough of one's self into the 



UNDER FIRE 127 

service. While I work I am as happy as I 
can be in a world full of fighting and hatred 
and pain. And yet I couldn't help thinking 
bitterly as I slipped between icy blankets 
(sheets had been discarded since the cold 
weather): "What a Christmas Eve!" 



CHAPTER VIII 

FETES 

TT is the telling about war work that 
-*• makes it interesting. At the time it is 
as tiresome and monotonous as any phys- 
ical labor carried on day after day. The 
danger and dreary sameness in which we 
live force us to seek distraction. We are 
always looking for entertainment, not so 
much as a rest and change from the physical 
strain, but from the nervous tension. As 
an English officer said: 

"War is damn dull, damn dirty, and 
damn dangerous." 

We could not endure our existence if 
we did not have the precious gift of for- 
getting ourselves in laughter. It was almost 
as hard to be cheerful on days when nothing 
happened as it was during a bombardment. 

.128 



FfiTES 129 

It takes so much courage and faith to re- 
sist boredom and weariness. 

During the coldest weather there was 
Httle fighting, most of the new cases being 
accidents. My "entrants" walked in with 
blankets over their shoulders and their 
long bare legs hanging down forlornly from 
the inadequate shirt given them in the 
triage when their own clothes had been 
taken away until necessary. Between ar- 
rivals and departures I had more doctors 
than patients and felt as if my ward were 
a raihoad-station. 

There was a rumor that we were to 
evacuate and that the English would take 
our part of the front. Our one-sheeted news- 
paper did not give us the information the 
people in America were getting each day. 
And yet we could watch the spirit of the 
fighting men and hear rumors of action 
ahead of time and have a wonderful op- 
portunity of watching the greatest spectac- 
ular performance in the world from a front 



130 HOSPITAL HEROES 

seat, as it were. We were too close for news, 
so we kept on sending men to the interior, 
gradually emptying the hospital. The work 
dragged on. 

We had only our work and quarrels to 
talk about. I suppose wherever a few people 
are gathered together there will be friction. 
However, when our barracks showed signs 
of falling apart, and much whispering went 
on on both sides of the dividing sheet like 

conspiring criminals, Madame G saved 

the situation by pinning on the door a copy 
of the sign seen in all railroad trains: 

"Taisez-vous ! Mefiez-vous ! 

"Les oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent." 

Our directrice summed up our feelings 
and situation at this time of coldness and 
inactivity by saying: 

"After the war Joffre and Petain will 
be sitting at a little table in a cafe along 
the boulevard, telling each other stories 
of the great war. Suddenly Joffre will stop 
in the midst of some reminiscence to ask: 




> 



FfiTES 131 

" *By the way, whatever became of 
those hospital units you sent up to the 
Aisne in 1917 with the Third Army?' 

"Whereupon Petain will clasp his fore- 
head and exclaim: 

" *Mon Dieu, I forgot all about them! 
Do you suppose they are still there ? ' " 

Though I could have taken time off, I 
preferred to stay in the ward, doing extra 
work, however unnecessary. I was happier 
with the blesses than anywhere else. They 
had undertaken to perfect my French, 
teaching me in various accents. One time 
a delirious entrant had given an angry 
cry: 

*'0h, there are Boches here !" hitting the 
air wildly, when I tried to persuade him 
that he would be more comfortable in bed 
than on the floor. 

Escaping from the danger zone, I told 
Meyran to watch him, while a "fiUeul" 
in the next bed explained to him that I 
was not German, and that in a short time 



132 HOSPITAL HEROES 

he would grow accustomed to my American 
accent. When he recovered he began giving 
me French lessons, as an apology, I suppose. 
He did not allow me to "sing" or drawl, 
but made me hurry along staccato, in one 
tone deep in the throat. The whole ward 
helped with the matter of gender. I tried 
to compromise by having one day all mascu- 
line and the next feminine, but this did not 
suit my instructors. Protests of "la tete" 
or "le lit" would come from every side, 
punctuating my attempts at conversa- 
tion. 

Most of the blesses have been decorated 
with the "croix de guerre" for valor, or 
the "medaille militaire" (and a pension) 
for the mutilated ones. This is an impres- 
sive ceremony, though it happens so often. 
Sometimes one man will receive both decora- 
tions. The citation is read by the "medecin- 
chef," followed by a kiss on each cheek. 
The whole ward compliment the hero, and 
the walking delegates shake hands with 



FETES 133 

him. It always makes me rather sad. The 
two httle medals pinned on the patched 
shirt of some "ampute" do not seem a fair 
exchange for a leg or an arm. They look sort 
of cheap. It is the reading of the citation 
that thrills me. There is a colored man at 
the Equitable Trust in Paris who told me 
his son had been missing almost a year. 
He recited a long citation his son had 
received for several remarkable deeds, hav- 
ing learned it completely by heart. 

The blesses could tell many stories if they 
wanted to, but they don't. They are past 
that. Most of them must have had splen- 
did deeds of heroism behind their wounds. 
Even if there had been time for conversa- 
tion they were too weak and feverish to 
have their strength taxed this way for 
curiosity. Later, when the worst is over, 
they do not refer to the past. I thought 
it kinder to help them forget. Others who 
care less, and were not so busy, can tell 
the stories. I only want to show the blesses 



134 HOSPITAL HEROES 

as I knew them, telling only what I saw 
and dwelling on the horrible side as little 
as possible. 

Sometimes there is a moving-picture 
show, and all who can limp or stand the 
strain of being carried on a stretcher to 
another part of the hospital are allowed to 
go. There is much excitement when this 
happens. The lucky ones go off with so 
much joy, I felt sorry for those who were 
left. This is how our concerts started. Of 
course we had always had "phono fetes" 
for a while each afternoon when there were 
no "entrants" or "operes." But this went 
on while I was working, and though I was 
amused at the absurdity of washing feet 
to the tune of "Tipperary" or "Old Black 
Joe," it was not much of "fete" for me. 
They hked to resurrect old American dance- 
music for my benefit, and burst out laugh- 
ing at the nasal twang of our popular 
vaudeville voices. Little did I realize a few 
years before, while dancing at a college 



FfiTES 135 

prom or Sherry's, that I would be cutting 
nails (and using both hands, for they were 
tough) to those same merry dance-tunes. 

When the others had gone to the 
"cinema" there was little for me to do, 
so I decided to amuse the unfortunate ones 
who were left behind. I sang to them in 
Italian, a few Neapolitan street-songs; in 
English, especially ragtime for the drag 
and rag pleases them; and in French, their 
own popular songs and marches, and some 
American ragtime I heard translated in 
Parisian vaudevilles. "They Didn't Be- 
lieve Me" and "Hello, My Dearie," sound 
almost sensible in a foreign language. 

After that, in the evening when no one 
was in great pain, in the interim between 
"soupe" and sleep, while I gave the rubs 
and tucked them in for the night, there 
would be a concert. It was really a most 
serious and formal event. Mayou was master 
of ceremonies, walking up and down the 
ward commanding order, with a little cane 



136 HOSPITAL HEROES 

hooked over the end of his left arm where 
his hand used to be. 

Some of them have very good voices. 
I Hke to hear "Monsieur le Cultivateur" 
sing my favorite selections from Puccini, 
Massenet, and Saint-Saens. In spite of 
my great love of music, these peasants 
often shame me by their superior knowledge 
of grand opera. 

The "adjudant" sings most dramatic 
pieces, and almost flings himself out of 
bed in the excitement of "Le Dernier 
Tango." Frangois's eyes twinkle wickedly 
as he sings "Nous avons tons fait ga. Plus 
ou moin, n'est-ce pas?" or some improper 
ballad that the French appreciate. I do 
not understand the most improper, and 
airs are always pretty, so I do not mind. 

Some of the performers have not good 
voices and yet insist upon taking part. 
This is often quite trying, especially when 
it is a "sergent" who wishes to honor us. 
Their songs are even longer than those 



FETES 137 

sung by the good voices as if, in defiance 
of criticism, they would show their superior- 
ity in memory if not in musical ability. 
Nothing will stop them until every verse 
is done, and some of the popular songs have 
so many, many verses. If they get hoarse 
or choke, and are unable to go on, I am 
summoned and must administer a cure. 
So in the midst of our soiree the sound of 
gargling is often heard as an interlude. 
But no one laughs if "Mon coeur s'ouvre 
a ta voix" has strange variations, for, 
though extempore, this concert is a serious 
affair. Even I am reprimanded severely by 
Mayou when I speak, if only to ask if some 
one is comfortable or am I hurting him by 
rubbing too vigorously. 

I like the marching songs in which the 
whole ward joins for the chorus: "Quand 
Madelon vient nous servir a boire," 
"Marche Lorraine," and "Paname" (a sort 
of Paris "Tipperary"). I taught them a 
French version of "Over There." Some of 



138 HOSPITAL HEROES 

them are eager to learn English and like 
songs that have a few words like "Tout le 
long de la Tamise." They know a little of 
"Smile, Smile, Smile," and all of them come 
in with a "smile" whenever there is a 
chance. We are rather proud of our chorus, 
but some one coming in to borrow aspirin, 
remarked crushingly that she "never heard 
such a noise, every one in a different key." 
Tant pis ! 

They are afraid I will be lonely or bored 
and treat me with a fatherly solicitude 
mingled with a kind of awed respect, because 
I have come such a long way from home 
across a dangerous ocean, and have settled 
down so near the front lines. Not being a 
travelling race like ours, this impresses them 
a great deal. I am quite a curiosity and 
source of unfailing interest from my Ameri- 
can accent to my American shoes. When I 
have letters, they are most interested. 

"Look, Mademoiselle has a long letter 
from her fiance." 



FETES 139 

"No, no, Pierre, that is the writing of 
her brother. She gives me the envelopes, 
for I Hke to have American stamps." 

"Mademoiselle, you have many broth- 
ers," said one sceptically. 

They wanted to hear about my brothers 
and the various camps they were in. They 
were also most anxious about my future, 
and asked me repeatedly if I had a fiance, 
and if I would marry a Frenchman or an 
American. 

When an American ambulance boy was 
brought into my ward, their excitement 
was intense. With their love of romance, 
they looked forward with much interest 
to what to them was my opportunity. 

I tried not to be partial, though it was 
a relief to speak English again. He had 
broken his arm cranking a Ford at an am- 
bulance section near us. Bored to death, 
he roamed around with his right arm in a 
plaster cast. He was always hungry, and 
I have to admit that the French food for 



140 HOSPITAL HEROES 

wounded is not very substantial for a 
healthy American appetite, so I smuggled 
some of my pudding from lunch, and gave 
him a party hidden away in my little room 
at the back of the ward, where the blesses 
could not see that he was being treated 
better than they were. 

He was very popular and made me quite 
jealous. One blesse claimed him as a friend 
because he had brought him to the hospital 
in his ambulance, so they had their meals 

together at a little table by the stove. C 

could not appreciate his table manners as 
much as his devotion, and often begged 
me to sing, especially while the soup was 
being consumed. He cheered them up and 
gave them a perpetual "fete," having a 
generous supply of cigarettes and crackers. 
"Monsieur le Valet*' gave him French 
lessons. His favorite amusement was stroll- 
ing out of the ward and getting the "bran- 
cardiers" to carry him in on a stretcher. At 
the cry of "Un entrant!" I would hurry 



FfiTES 141 

up with the orderlies, and C would 

roll off on an empty bed to the huge ap- 
preciation of the whole ward. Coquelle 
was so fond of his cough-drops that he 
munched them continually, even after his 
operation before he was allowed a drink, 
and said he didn't care if they made him 
ill, he liked them. 

Sometimes C would have visitors 

from his ambulance section. They would 
take the place by storm. The "phono" 
would play and attract some of the younger 
"aides-majors." One of them had a kind of 
flute that he whistled through. They asked 
me to sing "the song that was sung when 
the Lusitania went down," so I got part 
way through "Nearer, My God, to Thee," 
until the Americans told me not to be such 
a gloom. Then we tried the "Star-Spangled 
Banner" by request, starting three times 
before we got the pitch that was not a 
growl at the start, and yet would not take 
us beyond our powers at the end. It was 



142 HOSPITAL HEROES 

not a success, but I redeemed myself by 
singing all three verses of the "Marseil- 
laise." To be truly patriotic, the Ameri- 
cans present rendered "Dixie" and "Over 
There." By order of the "major" (I insisted 
that it be a military command) I danced 
with several of the guests, to the immense 
satisfaction and flattering approval of the 
blesses, and the horror of the caporal, who 
was a priest. 

When any of the visitors came to take 
pictures, there was a wild scramble for 
any sort of clothing available. Men that I 
had thought were beyond caring for any- 
thing but sleep and peace would stand 
around in the snow with long lavender 
bed-socks pulled up to their knees over 
faded and patched pa jama trousers and a 
sweater or blanket around them. If they 
had their kepi they could pose happily 
and with dignity for hours. There were so 
many demands for pictures that we some- 
times had to pretend to take them in order 



FETES 143 

to get them back to bed. Then some time 
exposures had to be attempted for those 
who could not get up, or there would be 
tears. Such babies, these great bearded 
godsons of mine ! 

Sometimes in the evening I wrote letters 
for those who cannot use their hands. They 

liked to hear C dictating his with a 

few French expressions. However, it was 
a little embarrassing having him there, and 
I was rather relieved when the medecin- 
chef allowed him to be sent to Doctor 
Blake's in Paris. He had never been in a 
hospital before, and seemed more human 
than the French whom I treated like 
children and thought of as a neuter class 
of simply blesses. 

One day, soon after his arrival, C 

had asked me where he could take a bath. 
When I told him to wait before getting 
dressed until I came — I would give him the 
only kind available — he did not look very 
enthusiastic over the idea, and was not in 



144 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the ward when I arrived next day. His 
doctor was annoyed and muttered some- 
thing disparaging to the eaporal about 
Americans who never understood mihtary 
disciphne. I was rather worried about his 
A. W. O. L. Seeing my anxiety, the blesses 
teased: 

"Ah, Mademoiselle, he no longer loves 
you. You^ have been too cold and cruel. 
He has gone away forever." 

At last he appeared in the doorway in 
his sheepskin coat covered with snow. I 
hurried up with a scolding. 

"Well, you see, Inferior Major," he 
began, calling me his interpretation of my 
explication that I was infirmiere-major of 
that ward, "I just had to get a bath. Yours 
would have been all right, but I wanted 
the kind I was used to taking for six sous. 
Please don't be cross. I promise never to 
take another if it's going to bother you so 
much." 

The time for the second injection of anti- 



FETES 145 

tetanus was a trying one, and much dreaded 
by the victim and me. They all felt that 
the first "piqlire" received upon their 
entrance in the triage was enough, and 
this second one an insult to their present 
state of recovery and well-being. Camphor- 
ated oil or morphia, when ordered by the 
doctor, were accepted without a murmur, 
but this antitetanus in the stomach seemed 
to hurt more. I did not like to give it, and 
they made matters worse. The walking 
delegates would run to the other end of the 
long, narrow ward or hide under the beds. 
The "Begonias" would help me trace an 
escaping one, entering the game with great 
zest, crying, "Here he is! See! Under this 
bed," as he rolled from one end of the ward 
to the other, while I pursued him, holding 
the tray with syringe, compresses, and 
iodine aloft out of a contact that would 
unsterilize my work. 

Whatever the trials of the day, we would 
always part friends, and I would leave the 



146 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ward at night amid a chorus of "Bonne 
nuit, Mademoiselle Marraine," and an oc- 
casional "Good-by" or "Sleep well." They 
often say these English words if I leave 
the ward in the daytime on an errand. 
They tell me how much my smiles help 
them, and do not understand that it is 
they who keep me "toujours gaie, toujours 
souriante." They are so brave, but one can 
be wretchedly unhappy while being brave 
and really would not be brave unless one 
suffered. 

It is in the hospital that the true courage 
is shown in this war. The old-time tactics 
and strategy and romance of the sword 
have been revolutionized by modern in- 
ventions. War of movement has practically 
been replaced by war of position. There is 
little opportunity for individual heroism and 
achievement when war is run on such a 
business basis, with the men fighting like 
members of a firm trying to put a big deal 
across. Machinery and poison-gas and 



FfiTES 147 

T. N. T. are winning the war. In such a 
contest, victory will come in the end to 
the side with the biggest numbers, the 
largest purse, and the most enduring nerves. 
But in the hospital the old-time Spartan 
fortitude and heroic endurance go on every 
day as each individual fights his own battle 
against pain. 



CHAPTER IX 

EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR 
NO. 7 

AS an interruption of the daily routine, 
■^ ^ we sometimes have an inspection by 
a general or several generals at once. The 
caporal warns me when this is to take place 
and there is a great house-cleaning. The 
whole ward must be scrubbed and smoothed 
out, cobwebs swept from the ceiling, every 
little table overhauled and books, papers, 
and games put away, all as quickly as pos- 
sible. The men must stay either in bed or 
near it, keeping as clean as they can. This 
is a great strain, as no one knows at what 
moment the generals will appear. After 
waiting indefinitely in a painfully immacu- 
late condition, they are apt to arrive in- 
considerately at the inauspicious moment 

148 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 149 

of "soupe," when every one is clamoring 
for more potatoes, eating noisily, or using 
a towel or a sleeve instead of the napkin 
hung beside their bed. 

The generals walk slowly through the 
ward, accompanied by the medecin-chef 
and other privileged officers. Sometimes 
they stop to inquire about a wound. One of 
them stopped in front of Riviere's huddled 
form. With Carrel tubes reaching up his 
back, he looked like a monkey on a chain. 
However, this wound did not matter to 
him. He accepted it philosophically as part 
of the war. When the general asked kindly: 

"And where were you wounded, mon 
petit.?" 

"In the operating-room, my general," 
Riviere replied, saluting solemnly. 

One of the "ministerielles," in her zeal 
to help, had burned him with a hot-water 
bag during his operation. I cannot imagine 
why the doctor did not notice. Poor Riviere 
suffered more from this unnecessary wound 



150 HOSPITAL HEROES 

than from the original one, which was bad 
enough, causing him to remain ever in a 
sitting posture, except at night, when the 
Carrel tubes were disconnected. I was so 
upset about this accident that Madame 

G offered to treat him with the new 

method of ambrine. She dressed his burn 
during the lunch-hour so I could help her. 
I was so interested that I went to the "Mis- 
sion de r Ambrine" when we went "en 
repos," and took the course. 

The process of heahng burns in this way 
is very simple and easily learned. The treat- 
ment is without pain, which seems unbe- 
Uevable when one sees huge raw wounds. 
We took Riviere to the "salle de panse- 
ments" instead of doing his dressing in the 
ward, partly because the apparatus was 
easier to manage there, and also because 
of the frightful odor of the old dressings 
when they were removed. 

Little by little, the new skin gains over 
the raw space. Wounds that have been 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 151 

treated with ambrlne heal without a scar. 
Even faces that have been badly burned 
are left clear and unmarred. It can only 
be used, however, on thoroughly clean, 
disinfected wounds, as it has no antiseptic 
properties. But a burn is never very septic, 
so that the wound is usually clean if it is 
not too deep. When not perfectly clean, the 
wound may be treated with "serum phy- 
siologique" or "huile gomenolee" or a 
"pansement humide" for two days instead 
of ambrine. 

Ambrine gets its name from being the 
color of amber. It was first used for rheuma- 
tism. The idea is so simple that it seems 
strange no one thought of using it for burns 
before. Paraffin is taken at fifty-two degrees, 
a hundred parts for five or ten parts of 
gutta-percha, which makes the paraffin 
supple. This mixture, which looks like 
cakes of maple-sugar, is placed in an auto- 
clave or popinal at one hundred and thirty 
degrees under pressure of one and one-half 



152 HOSPITAL HEROES 

kilograms for four hours. It Is then left in 
water at eighty degrees until used. 

The solution must never be boiled, as the 
petrol gases will be liberated, and this vapor 
is inflammable. Ambrine cools much more 
slowly than water. When applied on a 
wound at fifty degrees, it will only have 
lost five or six degrees by the next day. 
It does not burn and can even be used at 
sixty degrees on an open wound. Applied 
hot, it is liquid, but hardens when cooler, 
forming a supple shell, covering the wound, 
but separate from it and non-adhesive. 
Under the influence of the heat, the tissue 
dilates and mends itself. 

The chief advantages of this treatment 
are its entire absence of pain, the quickness 
of the healing on account of so little loss 
of substance (the dermis not being de- 
stroyed), and the good quality of the cica- 
trice. Instead of putting the blesse to sleep 
during his operation, his wound is put 
to sleep for twenty-four hours, which en- 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 153 

courages the epidermis to grow and the 
new skin to form and gain over the burned 
part. Unlike other dressings, it does not 
stick to the wound, so there is no puUing 
or tearing of the tissue in taking it off. 
After three days, white begins to appear 
around the edges and white spots form in 
the middle of the wound. These are new 
living cells. If this treatment does not suc- 
ceed, the wound cannot be clean. It is the 
first dressing that aids nature, and is also 
used for eczema and frozen feet. 

The method of applying ambrine is an 
important factor. I will tell you how Ma- 
dame G treated Riviere. First, she 

removed the dressing and dead skin, puUing 
gently with forceps or cutting with scissors, 
but never touching with her hands or an 
unsterilized instrument or tearing any but 
loose pieces. She washed the wound with 
a solution of salt water, "eau oxygenee," or 
Dakin, using a glass tube so that only the 
solution touched the wound. The edges 



154 HOSPITAL HEROES 

were then cleaned with alcohol or ether, 
and afterward zinc oxide or sterilized vase- 
line was appHed. She dried the surface 
thoroughly with warm air. If not dried 
well, the ambrine will heat the water and 
burn. The ambrine is squirted on the wound 
with an atomizer or painted on with a 
brush sterilized for each dressing. When 
the surface is white, a thin layer of steril- 
ized absorbent cotton is quickly put on to 
keep the heat and another coat of ambrine 
which clings to the cotton, forming a cover 
more supple than compresses. Both kinds 
of cotton are then wrapped around the 
dressing, held in place by moist band- 
ages. 

Every wound that came to us was in- 
fected and it was remarkable the way the 
men recovered. When every opening was 
filled with earth, bits of clothing, mud, and 
even flowers, there must be immense sepsis. 
Perhaps the microbes in the fields are not 
as deadly as those in crowded cities. The 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 155 

men who had led healthy, moderate lives, 
especially peasants who had lived out-of- 
doors, of course, had the advantage. The 
men in the wards made better progress than 
the oflScers who were isolated. The officers' 
ward was usually empty except for a few 
beds clustered forlornly at one end. 

Although the military disciphne of our 
hospital was as rigid as that in the army, 
the "medecin-chef" being generalissimo, 
there was the same off-duty "camaraderie" 
among "majors" and poilus that I had 
noticed in Paris when officers and their 
men chatted together at the same table in 
a cafe. It seems, when off duty, the poilu 
can say what he likes with the freedom of 
a Roman soldier to the centurions. How- 
ever, the collapse of the Russian army 
shows that only highly intelligent and pa- 
triotic soldiers can be allowed such license. 
The tie of service brings all dreams of 
brotherhood true, whether the French gen- 
eral calls his men "mes petits soldats" or 



156 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the British officer loves his men at a dis- 
tance, as Robert Nichols expresses it: 

"Was there love once? I have forgotten her. 
Was there grief once? Grief still is mine. 
Other loves I have; men rough, but men who stir 
More joy, more grief, than love of thee and 
thme." 

There is great confusion in the ward 
when a train of evacuation goes. The eve- 
ning before, those who can walk gather 
around the stove, and we sing and drink 
"To the end of the war." Each "evacue" 
gets a farewell friction and my initials in 
iodine on his chest besides a clean bandage 
for the journey. 

Next day the caporal brings in a mass 
of uniforms and the personal effects taken 
from the men on their arrival. These have 
to be sorted out and each returned to the 
proper owner, even to the special "bidon" 
for wine. Socks, shirts, and anything de- 
stroyed or lost are replaced from the hos- 
pital supply. Each blesse has his papers 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 157 

in a large envelope tied to a button of his 
coat, making him look like a helpless little 
child travelling alone for the first time. 
They are quite pathetic in their misfit uni- 
forms, many of them bearing decorations 
pinned proudly on the shabby coat that 
has seen rough service, others wearing their 
glory and reward inside their chests or 
shining in their eyes. 

It is hard to see them go, all these men 
whose sufferings I have shared, and with 
whom I have experienced the joys a^ well 
as the horrors of war. They come to us 
with tears of pain and leave us in tears of 
regret, some to their homes as "reformes," 
some to base-hospitals, others back to the 
front after a furlough. 

Before the train leaves, I make a tour 
of inspection and am glad when I see the 
name of Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt on the side 
of a car as well as the usual red crosses, 
for then I know there is a clean little *'salle 
de pansements " and a neat blue-and-white 



158 HOSPITAL HEROES 

kitchen. The officers have a special car, 
but the poilus are herded into box-stalls 
hastily arranged with swinging stretchers, 
two rows deep. I try to make them com- 
fortable with little pillows under their 
heads and backs. 

My blesses get so shuffled up in the 
process of embarkation that I run dis- 
tractedly with flying cape and veil to find 
them and give them cigarettes and choco- 
late. However, if any one thinks he is being 
overlooked he calls me, so no one is left 
out. We wave as the train pulls out, calling 
"Aurevoir!" and "Bonne chance!" until 
they are gone. 

"I shall give myself the pleasure of seeing 
you in America soon" is a universal am- 
bition. I suppose they have grown curious 
about us, or does the almighty dollar lure 
them from an impoverished country.^ By 
their letters of appreciation I still have 
news of them and can follow each one from 
hospital to hospital, at his home, or in the 




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EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 159 

trenclies, from a quiet rest "cantonnement" 
to the second line of the Boches, through 
all their danger and hardships, work and 
pleasures. 

They make me feel as if I had two coun- 
tries, my own and France. Work with her 
men in her hour of need has bound me more 
closely than months of travel and pleasure 
could have done. I have made friends that 
will last beyond the war. What matter 
where they come from or what they did 
before? They are worth remembering now 
and I am deeply touched when any of them 
greet me later, meeting by chance in Paris. 

The poilu is unaware of his fineness, and 
yet there is some unconscious solace in his 
heart, the only thing man-made or God- 
made that war cannot take from him. He 
is brave as a matter of course because it is 
the better way. He rather regrets that it 
is necessary to be a soldier, and lets poets 
talk about it instead of doing so himself. 
The doctors are the ones who glory in being 



160 HOSPITAL HEROES 

military. But, though war has no glamour 
for him and life is dear, it is not so dear 
as France and honor. 

When his wounds hurt or a long-expected 
letter fails to arrive, he grumbles, cursing 
the government and calling all those behind 
the Hues slackers, but, except for these 
moments of depression and the agony of 
dressings or operations, he is contented 
enough. He does not worry about his future, 
but takes what comes as stoically as he 
can. These newsboys, apothecaries' clerks, 
carters, scene-shifters, blacksmiths, and 
porters are not the ones to philosophize 
about life. They are not morbid or senti- 
mental and do not talk religion. They hate 
war and long for peace; but even more they 
hate those who do not take an active part 
in it, and feel a contempt for any one who 
tries to get peace without fighting for it. 
There seems to be an unexpressed convic- 
tion among them that this war must be 
fought to a finish, not only to the annihila- 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR NO. 7 161 

tion of the Hun, but the end of all wars. 
Lifted out of their pre-war selves, they do 
their duty with the tenacity of the conunon, 
necessary man in the line. 

English and American wounded are rest- 
less and their spirits require activity, but 
the Frenchman can lie in bed month after 
month discussing politics, reading, and writ- 
ing letters. His stoicism under great pain 
is incredible, and though he comes from 
the humblest of homes, his education gives 
him some interest to fall back on. He is 
childishly unselfconscious, and his imag- 
ination and never-failing sense of humor 
make a game or joke of misfortune. He 
is always appreciative, refined, and gentle, 
sharing any present that may come for 
him with his comrades and never forgetting 
to offer some to me. 

When in uniform. Tommy is undoubtedly 
more "chic." I have never seen a poilu in 
a uniform that fitted him. The long, bulky 
overcoat with its long-waisted belt makes 



162 HOSPITAL HEROES 

him look like a tramp. "Sac au dos," and 
laden with all their impedimenta, they look 
like an army of White Knights walking 
out of Alice's "Looking Glass" world. Their 
humor shows in their eyes and their mental 
attitude about things, giving expression 
and mobility to their faces, which are usu- 
ally well modelled and sensitive and almost 
never fat. Though my heart aches when I 
see them, they soon make me forget their 
pain in their glory. The French may not 
be sports in our American and English 
athletic sense of the word, but for stoic 
endurance, self-sacrifice, and heroism they 
are the best of sports. They keep alive the 
spirit of France, though its morale may 
weaken in the rear. 

When my ward was empty, I went to 
the emergency ward to help with the serious 
cases that could not be moved till the last 
minute. The ward is full of feverish men 
constantly asking for drinks. There is one 
with a chest wound who, forbidden to speak. 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR No. 7 163 

calls "Sist !" more loudly than the rest and 
more often. He is from the "midi," and for 
some reason, which I have never been able 
to discover, these "midi" men are not 
popular.* They are usually the ones who 
swear hysterically and their bodies are tat- 
tooed. "Sist" is covered with beautiful 
women. I try to rub them out when I give 
him a friction, and it always amuses him 
to have me say, "Disparu," when I cover 
them with powder so he can blow it off 
again and reveal his fair escort as before. 
"They" are his wife, so he considers it 
quite all right to have them. 

There are some who worry about their 
temperatures and almost turn their faces 
inside out trying to see their eyes and 
tongues at the same time in tiny cracked 
mirrors. Three "amputes" owe their lives 
to orderlies who gave some of their blood 
for a transfusion. "They are going to do 

*The troops who retreated when the Germans took Alsace- 
Lorraine were from the midi. Hence their reputation as cowards. 



164 HOSPITAL HEROES 

a confusion," one of the English told me, 
and it was a good description. The blood 
is carried by instalments in a syringe from 
one end of the room to the other, as the 
orderly is put in the first unoccupied bed, 
and the one to be saved is usually far 
up in the ward, near the stove. There is 
a large audience of doctors, medical stu- 
dents, infirmieres, ministerielles, and order- 
lies. 

Smoking is forbidden in this ward of 
"grands blesses," but one day I found a 
package haK-fuU on Erard the "artilleur's" 
table. He has a Carrel tube in his head 
which he calls a telephone and reprimands 
me for using it so often. When I took his 
cigarettes, he said: 

"They are good to eat, my friends. Didn't 
I tell you.f^ See, the little Mademoiselle 
wants to try the rest." 

The wounds were of all kinds, one man 
often having several. Sometimes they have 
lain neglected for days before being dis- 



EVACUATION OF AUTO CHIR No. 7 165 

covered. One of them who had a frightful 
back told me he had received additional 
wounds while waiting to be picked up. The 
Germans had a habit of slashing and shoot- 
ing the wounded as they passed over them. 
As I looked at the inevitable "eclats" 
treasured by the men, I learned about 
shells and bullets. 

Shell wounds were frequent, an "eclat 
d'obus" often tearing a whole limb away, 
for these shells are intended to destroy 
fortified towns. Shrapnel is for people. It 
is a metal case holding dozens of bullets, 
perhaps a half-inch in diameter, packed 
by hand, carrying a charge of explosives 
timed to burst when it reaches its destina- 
tion. Being smooth and round, the bullets 
go through soft tissue without much in- 
jury, but when they strike a bone they 
flatten and cause frightful pain. There is a 
barbaric German bullet, short and pointed, 
which when it strikes turns a somersault 
and goes in backward. The base having 



166 HOSPITAL HEROES 

been thus protected spreads, and the result 
is ghastly. 

Sheets are hung around the beds of the 
dying, and the priest comes quietly through 
the back door, but every one knows what 
has happened. It is hard to be cheerful 
in this ward of strain and silence, and yet 
I feel more one of them, as if I had earned 
the right to be "Sister," as the English call 
their military nurses. 

There were a few British wounded before 
we left. They were hurt by bombardments 
or accidents on their way to the front.^In 
the evening they would gather in groups 
for close harmony, singing hymns and 
other melancholy selections. They asked 
me to join them, but I hated to spoil it, 
and, besides, did not care for their pathetic 
strains. Perhaps they were chosen out of 
respect to the more serious cases or maybe 
every Tommy is sentimental under a gruff 
and hearty exterior. 



CHAPTER X 

ARRIVAL OF THE BRITISH 
FIFTH ARMY 

^ I ^HE long-rumored arrival of the British 
-*• became an actual fact. Khaki-clad 
troops passed our hospital, swinging along 
to various gay tunes played by the first 
band I had heard outside of a vaudeville 
since I came to France. They were quite 
a contrast to the silent marching of the 
French as they returned, gray and tired, 
from their hard winter in the trenches. 
The smart-looking officers might have been 
riding in Hyde Park, so little did they sug- 
gest the ghastliness of the war they were 
going into. With every button on every 
Tommy's uniform shining and even the 
harness on the work-horses gleaming in 
the sun, they all looked as if they were 

167 



/ 
/ 



168 HOSPITAL HEROES 

off on a lark. And yet their English voices 
singing songs I had often sung at home 
made war seem nearer. 

The road was a whirl of action. Army- 
scouts hurried noisily by on motorcycles. 
Military motor-cars and ambulances sped 
by. An occasional London motor-bus 
crowded with more singing boys rumbled 
past, followed by heavy lorries, groaning and 
creaking, cannon, kitchen and ammunition 
wagons moving slowly, with a cloud of dust 
behind. 

The men seemed very young, even the 
officers. It was good to hear English and 
we talked if they halted near us. There 
was no presentiment of tragedy. Perhaps 
they did not reahze, but I think they did, 
and it was just their courageous way of 
doing their bit. I shall never forget the 
heroic and inspiring impression they made 
with their shining buttons as they marched 
singing into one of the worst slaughters 
of the war. How terribly few of these 




m 






THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 169 

"cheereo" young men ever returned from 
this march. The song they sang most often 
I shall always remember: 

"There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land 

of my dreams 
Where the nightingales are singing and the white 

moon beams. 
There's a long, long night of waiting until my 

dreams all come true 
Till the day when I'll be going down that long, 

long trail with you." 

And we never thought so many would 
pass into the land of dreams without any 
more waiting. 

Having nothing to do for a week, owing 
to the necessity of waiting for "permission" 
to move to another part of the war zone, 
we walked through the country. Except 
for the exercise and being outdoors, I did 
not enjoy this much. The front seems so 
far away from everything one has grown 
to expect in life. The perpetual mud gives 
the landscape a lugubrious expression. It 



170 HOSPITAL HEROES 

seems a place set apart by a curtain of 
rain. One walks on and on through a 
monotonous flat land of vast mistiness and 
black crows, while the guns stir up the 
quiet atmosphere with their pounding like 
a melancholy storm. 

One day Madame G and I set out 

for Ham, a town of about three thousand 
inhabitants before the war, situated on the 
River Somme, in a marshy country. We 
started in an ambulance, but as it was for- 
bidden to carry passengers, we were shut 
out of sight with the back flap down. This 
was not interesting, so we soon got out 
and tried our luck again. This time, I 
stopped an English officer in a Rolls-Royce. 
In my embarrassment, I said: 

"Oh, I am so sorry ! I would never have 
stopped you if I had known. I never ex- 
pected there would be a staff-officer so 
near the front." 

"We leave Paris now and then if it is 
quite worth while, but what a shocking 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 171 

bad opinion you have of us. What, what?" 
He laughed and took us in. 

The streets of Ham were Hke a pageant. 
French poilus rubbed elbows with British 
officers, American Red Cross men strolled 
along with Scotchmen in kilts. There was 
even a troop of Chinese coolies. The few 
shops exhibited large supplies of wrist- 
watches and wedding-rings with every-day 
necessities of life. Tobacco was scarce. A 
long line extended into the street from the 
one shop that had any for sale. 

The only ruin was the chateau, founded 
in the tenth century, with a great tower as 
its distinguishing feature. It had been used 
as a state prison, having had among other 
inmates Jeanne d'Arc and Louis Napoleon. 
Later, it was used as barracks until the 
Boches destroyed most of it, leaving a vast 
mass of stone partly blocking the canal. 

We returned on top of a high-seated farm- 
wagon. There was a springlike mist in the 
air, though it was only February, and the 



172 HOSPITAL HEROES 

distance seemed to fade into soft pastel 
colors like a sunset. I never saw so many 
magpies. They gave contrast to the pale 
shades of the country as if on purpose. 

Another day I had luncheon in Noyon, 
a town twice the size of Ham, situated on 
the slopes of a hill in Oise. This had been 
the German headquarters at the beginning 
of the war, so the buildings were almost 
all spared, and clustered around an open 
square with a fine old hotel de ville and 
a twelfth-century cathedral. There are 
many shops and the streets were crowded. 
We had to have tea in a kitchen, as the 
tea-rooms were full of officers and canteen 
women. 

We followed the remains of an old 
Roman wall to some cemeteries. The Ger- 
man graves were forlorn and neglected, with 
rough wooden crosses and numbers in con- 
trast to the festive wreaths and flowers 
of the French. A German inscription on 
a large tomb in which many had been buried 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 173 

showed that they were not all ignored and 
forgotten. These German graves depressed 
me. It seemed so sad to be left in the land 
of their enemy far from their homes with 
no one to care. After all, they were victims 
of the same militarism that was hurting us 
all, only more unfortunate because they 
were on the wrong side, pledged to follow 
false leaders. 

On the way back we were picked up by 
two Tommies in a motor-lorry. They were 
so glad to speak English again that we 
were entertained all the way. Among other 
topics, the name of Lafayette was men- 
tioned. 

"I say, Sister," one of them began, "who 
is this Lafayette chap you Americans and 
French talk so much about .f^" 

As I hesitated to resurrect the old enmity, 
the other quickly spared me: 

"Why, don't you know? Thought every- 
body had heard of him. He's the famous 
English conjurer and lion-tamer that made 



174 HOSPITAL HEROES 

such a hit on the stage eight or ten years 
ago. Haven't you heard of him? He was 
burned to death in a fire. Famous, that's 
what he was, the greatest conjurer Eng- 
land ever had." 

An EngUsh colonel and staff entertained 
us in a haK-ruined cottage near the avia- 
tor's grave. Although we went in three 
divisions, we were rather overpowering. 
Just before our arrival, the colonel told 
us a general had appeared and had been 
almost shoved from the door so he would 
not see the table spread with the best tea- 
party I had seen since my arrival. It was far 
more complete and delicious than any one 
could find in pastryless Paris. There were 
white bread (a most unheard-of luxury), 
pastry, confitures, toast, and plenty of 
butter and sugar. I could hardly wait for 
the party to begin, and felt the way I did 
at my very first party when the hostess had 
discovered me sitting on the floor in front 
of the dining-room door instead of playing 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 175 

games with the other children because I was 
"waiting for the party." 

When our order to depart finally arrived, 
the colonel gave a farewell party to six of 
us, a dinner as complete and unexpected as 
the tea had been, with everything marvel- 
lous even to a savory. The menus were 
printed on crested paper under the title: 
" 42d Field Ambulance B. E. F. Diner a 
I'Equipe Americaine, Auto Chir No. 7." 

We gathered around an open fire (an- 
other treat) afterward and listened to 
a Victor while the orderlies cleared the 
kitchen for dancing. We had to use the 
few good dance records over and over again. 
I will never hear the "Blue Danube" and 
the "Broken Doll" without thinking of 
that evening spent so gayly five miles from 
the German lines in a country soon to be 
taken by Von Hutier's first offensive. I do 
hope my friends came through. 

To punish us for staying out so late, 
the sheet partitions were packed while 



176 HOSPITAL HEROES 

we dressed next morning. The interior of 
our barracks looked like a series of stage- 
settings for moving pictures, the incon- 
gruous sights one sees at the Universal 
City in California being the only approach 
to the impression we gave, each one busily 
occupied with something that had no con- 
nection with what went on beside her. 
The beds and wash-stands stood awkwardly 
with no wall to lean against and account 
for their miscellaneous positions. Everything 
happened at random, while along the 
centre aisle the sheets were folded and 
laid in piles by those who were through 
packing. The directrice, being tired, stayed 
in bed and gave orders as unconcernedly as 
if she were on a throne. 

Before leaving Cugny, where I had lived 
so long and constantly without interrup- 
tion, I went to a little hill to say good-by 
to some carrier-pigeons and the two men 
in charge. Here every one talks to every 
one. All barriers are broken down by the 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 177 

great common interest. An American doc- 
tor went with me, and we arrived just as 
the wagon was moving away. A horse had 
been hitched to it and it was going "en 
repos" hke the rest of the Third Army, 
which had done its duty all winter, and 
I do not know how long it had been in 
active service before I joined it. 

The English loft was ready to take its 
place, an old motor-bus fixed over inge- 
niously into a little house. Two men could 
live in the lower part with bunks on one 
side and kitchen on the other, instead of 
camping outside in a tent, as the French 
had done. On top were the pigeons in a 
loft similar to the French, with the same 
little bell arrangement to announce the 
return of each messenger. It seemed like 
a boat drifting along independent of the 
massed formation of the rest of the army. 
These birds had helped in several important 
battles in Belgium. I wished they could 
have talked, for the men were so thoroughly 



178 HOSPITAL HEROES 

Scotch it was impossible to understand 
them. One must know many languages in 
this war, and one of the most difficult is 
English with all its accents. There is a 
store on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris with a 
sign "English Spoken. American Under- 
stood." 

Carrier-pigeons have played a great part 
in this war. The French appreciated their 
value in the last war, when, during the siege 
of Paris, they were the only communica- 
tion possible with the outside world. And 
yet, with the coming of wireless telegraphy, 
the use of these little messengers was sup- 
posed to have passed, and if it had not 
been for the interest in racing pigeons 
maintained by fanciers in France, Belgium, 
and England, there would have been no 
trained birds for this war. 

Among the many new inventions we 
still need old-fashined methods, and keep 
the old-time bayonets, hand-grenades, 
and pigeons. These birds did not look like 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 179 

the ones we call carrier, with scrawny 
build, ragged feathers, and homely beak 
and eyes. They were cultivated as racing 
homers, and are small, well built, with 
beautiful feathers. They did not look like 
soldiers as they cooed and murmured com- 
fortably in their clean loft. They seemed 
too frail and beautiful to be sent into the 
thick of battles, and yet even they had 
their part to play in the big war drama 
that called all to serve and spared no one. 

Our equipe separated, some going to 
Paris or the Riviera for a vacation, others 
to Ressons-sur-Matz with the supplies, it 
being our official place of "repos." Not far 
from Compiegne, it was considered out of 
danger, and yet it soon became the front, 
and some of our supplies were lost. 

It was a great privilege to take a course 
at Doctor Carrel's hospital installed in a 
hotel on the edge of the forest of Com- 
piegne. It was so clean and well equipped 
after our Auto Chir that it was worth see- 



180 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ing, though the wounds were not as interest- 
ing as ours had been. The course consisted 
in lectures, some of which were illustrated 
with colored plates and practical demon- 
strations as we watched the surgeon on his 
round of dressings, all of which were done 
in bed. He was assisted by two infirmieres, 
the matron, the doctor from the laboratory 
to take a blood-test each time, and two 
orderlies. With all of us and several other 
"stagiaires" there was quite a crowd, but 
blesses love an audience. 

The laboratory work, examining the 
germs through a powerful magnifying-glass, 
and making the Dakin solution, completed 
the "stage," after which we went to the 
"Mission de FAmbrine" which Madame la 
Baronne de Rothschild had installed in an 
old convent. While taking the courses we 
lived at a hotel opposite the chateau where 
the Etat-Major was located. We used to 
sit at the window and watch the staff -cars 
and gold-striped uniforms of all the Allied 



THE BRITISH FIFTH ARMY 181 

forces. They brought the glamour of war 
to remind us that armies were not entirely 
composed of muddy tramps in misfit uni- 
forms. The officers added to the "once- 
upon-a-time" impression of the historic 
chateau and park. Built during the times 
of Louis XV and Louis XVI on the site 
of an old hunting-lodge of the Frankish 
kings, it is very soothing and peaceful with 
its vine-covered arbors after the mud and 
shattered fragments of the front. 

The cathedrals have many beautiful 
stained-glass windows illustrating scenes 
from the life of Jeanne d'Arc, who was cap- 
tured here by the Burgundians and de- 
livered to the English. 



CHAPTER XI 

EN REPOS 

^■^HE night before we left for Paris, the 
-*- French "avions" made a raid on 
the German headquarters. Therefore the 
following night the enemy retahated, and, 
although they did not succeed in hitting 
the chateau, our hotel was struck and my 
room lost its wall. 

Paris was not a comfortable place at 
this time. Food restrictions were more 
severe. Pastry, candy, and sugar had dis- 
appeared. Bread cards were a necessity 
even in hotels. There was no cream or milk 
after nine o'clock a. m., not even for cooking. 
One could eat nothing between the hours 
of two and six in the afternoon, which re- 
duced tea-parties to a lonely cup of tea 
or chocolate made with water and served 

182 



EN REPOS 183 

without cream or sugar. A few places started 
to serve figs and dates in place of sand- 
wiches, but this was stopped immediately. 
Every one carried his own sugar-box, even 
to private houses. In the hotels a waiter 
made the rounds with a bottle of saccharine, 
giving a spoonful to those who had no 
sugar. One day when I had forgotten my 
little box, which was supplied indirectly by 
the American Commissary Department, a 
French aviator with a "croix de guerre" 
and long ribbon of palms offered me his. 
The "bonne camaraderie" of the front had 
come to Paris. 

Paris was in fact in the war zone. The 
German offensive had begun on March 21, 
under Von Hutier, striking the British on 
the southern flank, not unexpectedly, but 
with invincible violence and superior num- 
bers. Where the Fifth Army had been there 
opened up a thinly defended area which 
almost allowed the Germans to realize their 
dream of reaching Amiens and Paris. 



184 HOSPITAL HEROES 

A French officer reported that our little 
village of Cugny had been bombarded 
heavily shortly after our departure, and 
that forty people were killed. As I did not 
imagine there were that many inhabitants, 
it must have been wiped out of existence. 
Later, a British officer wlio had been sent 
to our former hospital, wounded in the 
arm, told how the British had set fire to 
it as the enemy approached so they would 
not profit by our supplies. Evidently the 
Germans had been counting on using it 
themselves, having spared it in all the raids 
while we were there. When they saw it in 
flames, they were so enraged that they shot 
the doctors and bayoneted the wounded 
before they could be hurried off in a train 
that was waiting. 

I like to hear the English tell their ex- 
periences. They are so frank and uncon- 
scious of heroism. The war is hunting or 
cricket to them, and, though they rather 
wish it was being played in England, they 



EN REPOS 185 

do not complain as long as they can run 
back to Paris now and then for a bath and 
good dinner. This officer told me calmly 
that he had been sent to Ham with a few 
men to load some barbed wire on a lorry. 
As they drew near the town, a shot was 
fired at them, from behind a house. He left 
his ten men in shelter while he went on 
"to have a look in, as it seemed a bit odd." 
The town was full of Boches, who fired at 
them with machine guns as they crawled 
all the way back to Cugny in the ditches 
of the unprotecting road. 

A world of cosmopolitan uniforms has 
almost obliterated the old Paris of the 
Louis and Napoleons. Their beautiful city 
of harmonious buildings, row after row of 
graystone carved into fragile designs or 
columns, with wide avenues and parks full 
of statues, has been turned into a city of 
khaki and sand-bags. The great doors of 
Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Napo- 
leon's column in the Place Vendome, and 



186 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the statues in the Place de la Concorde, 
around the Opera and in the Tuileries are 
all disguised by a defense of sand-bags. And 
yet the wine-like atmosphere is ever there, 
making it still a city of romance. 

Sometimes torches were set in the ground 
filling the air with a heavy black fog in an 
attempt to cover Paris with a protecting 
cloud. In the Bois de Boulogne and Luxem- 
bourg Gardens were a few balloons like 
those used for observation, but lacking the 
basket for the observer. When floating 
high at night, many wires were dropped 
and a fence formed, circling the city with 
a barrage of wire less dangerous to its in- 
habitants than the shrapnel of the anti- 
aircraft guns. 

The cafes in the Bois and along the 
Champs-Elysees had not opened as yet 
after the winter. The theatres would often 
have to stop performances scarcely begun 
because of an air-raid. It would not have 
paid the managers to issue rain checks, as 



EN REPOS 187 

it rained bombs so often. With nothing to 
do, the first charm of my vacation wore 
off when the luxuries of civihzation ceased 
to be a novelty. I joined an "ouvroir" at 
the Porte Dauphine, where artificial limbs 
were made by hand out of papier-mache. 
It made me happy to feel that I was still 
working for them "jusqu'au bout." 

The city at night was even darker than 
last summer. Very few of the street-lamps 
were lighted, and these, under dark-blue 
shades, did not shine far. A lighted car or 
even a flash-light carried by a pedestrian 
aroused a protesting cry of "Pas de 
lumiere!" One had to feel one's way in 
utter gloom under the archways that line 
the streets. Among so many fears, no single 
one predominates enough to make one 
afraid. People are cautioned to go into 
places of safety during air-raids to escape 
the falling shrapnel from the antiaircraft 
guns as well as bombs dropped from the 
aeroplanes. Hotels and other large build- 



188 HOSPITAL HEROES 

ings open their corridors and cellars to 
the public, marking on the outside wall 
how many can be accommodated in each 
"abri." Every entrance to the underground 
railroads has "refuge" over it in large 
letters of the usual blue. Trains stop, and 
the civilians crowd into the Metro and 
Nord-Sud stations to wait for the "All 
clear" to be sounded by the firemen. 

Air-raids occurred almost every night 
and sometimes twice in the same night. 
The damage done was greater than the 
one-sheet newspapers admitted, but re- 
pairs were quickly made, so there was 
scarcely a trace of the nightly tragedy. 
The "alerte" is given as soon as an enemy 
plane is reported to have crossed the front 
lines. At the warning shriek of the sirens 
and horns blown by firemen as their red 
cars speed through the city, the people 
disappear from the streets and upper stories 
of houses like ants into ant-hills. They say 
it is easy for the German aviators to find 



EN REPOS 189 

Paris by following the black spot of the 
Forest of Compiegne and the river. 

The "gothas" are so high that one can 
scarcely hear the machine guns on the 
planes or the hum of the motors, as one 
can when they fly low overhead at the 
front. Signal-lights like white and red stars 
move about, and the rumbling of the anti- 
aircraft cannon goes on in the distance. 
When a bomb falls there is a flash of light 
and a great crash and crunching sound. 
Except when these deafening bangs occur 
near by, it all seems far away and unreal. 
Night after night of interrupted sleep wore 
on the people so that there was an exodus 
of families with children and wounded from 
the hospitals. Except for a few people who 
drew their money from the banks, there 
was no sign of panic, though the Germans 
were advancing every day. 

After one night of a few hours' sleep owing 
to raids, I was awakened at half past six 
by a crash. Wondering how the "gothas" 



190 HOSPITAL HEROES 

dared appear in daylight, I strolled out into 
the street, where groups of sleepy, surprised 
people were gathered together scanning the 
sky, which was perfectly clear. Not quite 
daring to return to my room on the top 
floor, I breakfasted at Rumplemeyers, where 
I discussed the situation with a Salvation 
Army woman, a Russian officer in civilian 
clothes (they all went into disguise after 
their revolution), and the madame who 
was vainly trying to lure her waitresses 
back from the street. 

"Come back here, all of you," she called 
like a distracted hen. "Why do you insist 
upon standing out there listening to all the 
horrible stories those people tell? They 
will make you believe that the Kaiser him- 
seK is coming here for breakfast. Voyons !" 

By noon we learned that Paris was being 
bombarded by a long-range gun, carrying 
seventy-five miles from Laon, the nearest 
point of the German army. After another 
advance the cannon was moved nearer and 



EN REPOS 191 

fired from the Forest of St. Gobain. The 
shell was not as large as one would expect, 
and the sound scarcely more than that of 
a cork popping unless it fell near by. For 
several days a shot came every fifteen 
minutes, and the people grew so accustomed 
to it that strangers in cafes would bet or 
have heated arguments as to how many 
seconds over or under fifteen minutes Big 
Bertha was coming. 

The damage done by the long-range gun 
was not as great as that done during the 
air-raids, and yet it added considerably to 
the nervous strain and depression of spend- 
ing part of every night in cellars, reading 
news of the German advance through all 
the "France reconquise" of the year be- 
fore, and being in danger every fifteen 
minutes or half -hour of the day. It was a 
difficult test for even the strongest to stand. 
When the church of St. Gervais was struck, 
on Good Friday, and some of my friends 
had to search every hospital and even the 



192 HOSPITAL HEROES 

morgue for missing members of their fami- 
lies, I did not blame any one who left for 
the sunny south. I longed to be safe at 
the front again. There, at least, one could 
feel that the "gothas" might not hit a 
hospital, but in Paris one could not help 
realizing that each bomb was intended to 
kill as many people as possible. It makes 
one a fatalist, this feeling that only Provi- 
dence or luck saves each moment from being 
the last. How could one tell which way to 
go when any direction might prove fatal ? 

And yet, in spite of the unconquerable 
confidence in the future and the calm poise 
of the people, the shadow of war has fallen 
on the city. Both times I was in Paris when 
the morale was depressed, and I am glad I 
stayed long enough to adjust my impres- 
sions and separate the real from the false, 
the brave native soul of the city from the 
war-corrupted forms that covered it, washed 
back from the battles of many nations at 
war in one country. 



EN REPOS 193 

Paris is so far reraoved from the action 
and courage of the front that the unfit 
and afraid, the despair of the refugees, 
the poverty and worry and sorrow of the 
women, the careless attitude of the wounded 
and soldiers on leave, all help to give the 
impression of a great city dying. Seen from 
the streets, the life of Paris is abnormal 
and very tired, full of unrestrained loving 
and cadaverous faces with haunted eyes. 
People almost fall asleep as they trudge 
along in dowdy clothes, and cabs run riot- 
ously, with no traffic regulations. There is 
no conscience in these people who have 
been through unspeakable sorrow and pain, 
and no consequences to be feared. A frantic 
effort is made by exiles and all the home- 
sick soldiers who expect to die soon to 
crowd as much pleasure of any kind into 
what time remains. They have been through 
the worst and nothing matters. 

Everywhere houses are closed or for 
rent; even some of the large buildings that 



194 HOSPITAL HEROES 

had been used as hospitals are now vacant. 
The shop-windows hide their increasing 
emptiness behind fantastic designs made of 
pieces of paper pasted in long strips across 
the glass to prevent breakage by concus- 
sion during air-raids. In the homes of titled 
people one finds them living in large houses 
half closed, the walls dismantled and the 
treasured heirlooms, tapestries, and pictures 
sent away to the south for safe-keeping. 
One or two servants are all that remain of 
the once luxurious establishments, but there 
is no entertaining, so the work is light. The 
French are taking the war as seriously as 
they formerly took life frivolously; many 
of the women who were accustomed to 
ease and luxury are now hard at work in 
hospitals. I know one white-haired countess 
who was an invalid before the war, and is 
now head of a hospital of six hundred beds. 
The French gayety and enthusiasm seem 
to have burnt out, but underneath the 
dreary exterior a keen patriotism still lives. 



EN REPOS 195 

unhurt by war and its evil eiffects, strength- 
ened by the nobihty of its past, and looking 
forward to new beauty in the future. This 
unconquerable spirit is so great that it 
dwarfs the things that cannot spoil it, and 
scatters abnormality and unhealthiness be- 
fore it like a fresh breeze. The true soul of 
France tries to show all who are depressed 
that war cannot eat up the world. Man 
may try to destroy himself and use his 
knowledge to ruin all, but there are bigger 
things that have a life he cannot crush, 
and that will wait patiently for the storms 
to pass and the real work of the world to 
go on, the broken threads of life to be picked 
up and continued. 

It is easy to love the Paris of peace-time 
with its shaded avenues, built by kings 
who had no scruples about pushing the 
poor out of the way. With a genius for 
making scenery and architecture harmonize, 
they edge their avenues with long lines 
of symmetrical houses and colonnades. 



196 HOSPITAL HEROES 

But in war-time you must use your imag- 
ination and let it carry you back to the 
Paris that made history. Let your eyes 
follow the domes and spires up to the sky, 
where rainbows and unusual cloud effects 
are ever changing, due to intermittent 
showers. You have only to watch the sky 
to realize where the French artists find in- 
spiration. 

There are not enough artists in life. Any 
one taking a picture of Paris at this time 
would show a city paralyzed by four years 
of war and suffering, the weary heart of 
a country that has given up caring about 
life and clean things, a people who just 
want to lie down and die, resentful of the 
American energy that is coming in so late 
to stir it up again. But an artist is not satis- 
fied with plain facts as they appear on the 
surface. He penetrates to the innermost 
depths and finds the true meaning. Then 
he paints a picture with a soul. 

The wide culture and psychological genius 



EN REPOS 197 

of Paris is not dead, only smothered tem- 
porarily by a cloud of nervous pleasure- 
seekers who overrun the city while its 
heroes are dying at the front. These para- 
sites prey upon Paris when it has no vitality 
to shake them off. However, their voices 
are not so loud as the real voice that speaks 
from the spires of Notre Dame and the 
height of the Arc de Triomphe. 

The "repos" of the Third French Army 
was rudely interrupted, and General Hum- 
bert's reserves were sent out to stop the 
German advance. When my orders came 
to report for duty at Compiegne, then 
evacuated and almost in the hands of the 
enemy, every one said good-by as if they 
never expected to see me again. But really 
I was glad to leave Paris. The perpetual 
bombing was horribly on my nerves. I 
wanted to go where I could be busy enough 
to forget. I had even envied the concierge 
when he stopped cleaning windows, pulled 
down his sleeves, and apologetically ex- 



198 HOSPITAL HEROES 

plained as he ran the elevator that he had 
to be "all things" now. One can only en- 
dure war when one is not thinking. At the 
front there is no time to worry and wonder 
where the shells are falling, no time to 
think, just a lot of work that must be done 
quickly. 

A great many hospitals, field and base, 
had evacuated and were pushing south, so 
we were unable to install our Auto Chir 
until the offensive was broken and the 
counter-attacks began. Our supplies, sup- 
posedly left in a safe place, were inaccessible. 
In the meantime, we were to help the Amer- 
ican Red Cross to care for the refugees, and 
to- work in a canteen kitchen at the station. 
On our way out, the roads were full of the 
British going back, some of them being 
the sole survivors of their companies, and 
the French coming up with flowers in their 
bayonets and victory in their eyes. 



CHAPTER XII 

DURING THE GERMAN 
ADVANCE 

^ I^HE houses along the railroad near 
-*- Compiegne were only shells of what 
they had been the last time we made this 
trip. There were large shell-holes in the 
street leading to the hotel, now occupied 
by the American Red Cross. The hotel 
had lost its inside walls and had no running 
water, electric light, or servants. Only sol- 
diers and war workers were to be seen. 
With no mail service, not even a news- 
paper, and the civilians gone, the town was 
in a pathetic state of dilapidation. But it 
was not quite empty of its civilian popula- 
tion. Here and there would be a dog, guard- 
ing faithfully the door of a crumbling, roof- 
less house, or some starving cats would cry 
in the abandoned streets hke lost children. 

199 



200 HOSPITAL HEROES 

We were appointed various tasks as wait- 
resses and housemaids in the hotel, and 
chauffeurs to collect refugees, wounded, and 
supplies. A few of us were sent to care for 
the wounded at the station and in an aban- 
doned hospital. I went to the canteen 
kitchen near the station and crossroads 
to give coffee, crackers, chocolate, and 
cigarettes to the troops passing through on 
foot or driving the big guns and supply- 
wagons. Sometimes we would gather up a 
handful of chocolate and cigarettes and run 
into the road among the confusion of guns, 
heavy wheels, and horses' hoofs to throw 
something to the drivers who were unable 
to rejoin the line around the kitchen on 
wheels and its surrounding baskets. 

Usually I would stand all day, giving 
cigarettes with one hand and chocolate 
with the other to fill the endless line of 
outstretched hands. I had to stop sometimes 
to remind some one that he had returned 
too many times, and was cheating others 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 201 

of their share. They hked to see how often 
they could come back without being recog- 
nized, these poilus ever ready to tease. 
Sometimes, a former blesse of mine would 
greet me and cheer me on with a work 
that was rather fatiguing and not very 
interesting. One of them brought me a 
little girl "who had fallen from the nest," 
and could not find her parents. She had 
golden curls and such an appealing manner 
that I wanted to adopt her, but had to give 
her up to the Red Cross when I was re- 
minded that my work was with the blesses. 
As the laundry had been destroyed, we 
conserved the few uniforms we had brought 
with us in answer to the order: "Bring only 
what you can carry." We wore our dark- 
blue travelling uniforms with aprons that 
once had been clean, and tied our dark- 
blue veils back as if we were about to sweep 
a room. This was not the time to worry 
about looking "reglementaire." One did 
what one could. 



£02 HOSPITAL HEROES 

We even wore our uniforms at night 
when we slept in the damp "caves" deep 
down under the chateau. At first we 
stretched out on blankets on the moist 
stone floor, but later we had canvas beds 
like large camp-stools, not comfortable, but 
good enough when one was tired standing 
up all day. I even kept my boots on because 
the dampness made them too wet if I took 
them off and left them under the bed. Here 
we slept night after night during the bom- 
bardments, English and American canteen 
workers, Red Cross men, poilus, all of us 
in a long row in the narrow corridor of the 
cave. 

At six o'clock we would scramble up the 
slippery stairway several flights to the 
ground floor, leaving our blankets in a dry 
place, and hurry to the hotel to wash. This 
was a hope rarely realized, for usually a 
shell would whistle menacingly by the 
window, and we would be ordered to the 
wine-cellar under the hotel "toute de suite." 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 203 

Here we opened boxes of supplies for the 
canteen workers, and broke chocolate into 
pieces until the danger was over. We had 
to carry our gas-masks strapped over our 
shoulders wherever we went, as the rumor 
was that gas-bombs were being dropped. 

The day nurse at the abandoned hospital 
asked for assistance, and I was sent to help 
her, though what she really needed was an 
orderly. There were gangrene cases and a 
"trepane," and the work was the hardest 
and most disagreeable I had ever done. 
But it was so necessary I liked it better 
than the canteen, where I felt like a moving- 
picture actress as I ran wildly about among 
the heavy wagons with my veil floating 
in the wind and cigarettes dropping from 
my overflowing hands. One English-speak- 
ing boy had scribbled: "Darling, I love 
you. Love you myself?" In the hospital I 
was treated with respect. Some ambulance- 
drivers told me afterward that when they 
picked up men from these troops later they 



204 HOSPITAL HEROES 

invariably asked to be taken where the 
"petites infirmieres" were, so in spite of 
their jokes we were evidently appreciated. 

There was one doctor who had remained 
at Royallieu when the hospital had been 
evacuated, and one French nurse who had 
returned from "permission" after the others 
had left. She was shocked at the way things 
had been managed. 

"No, mesdames, this was not an evacua- 
tion. This hospital was abandoned in great 
haste. It is shameful." 

The doctor had no orderlies. There were 
a few roaming around quite intoxicated, 
but when asked to carry water or find food 
for their own countrymen, they always 
replied negatively that they were "of an- 
other service." We often gave the blesses 
our lunch. Work with men dying of gan- 
grene-poisoning does not make one hungry, 
and most of them were too hurt or feverish 
to eat much. But even water was hard to 
get. We wasted time and energy looking 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 205 

for the simple necessities that are usually 
taken for granted in a hospital. So many 
dressings and operations had to be done 
with the same meagre supply of instruments 
that I was always cleaning and sterilizing 
them. But that was better than helping 
the doctor, for the odor of gangrene is be- 
yond human endurance in a ward with the 
windows closed. Even matches were hard 
to get and we needed our lamp every min- 
ute for sterilizing and hot drinks. We could 
only do as the doctor ordered to the best 
of our ability with what material we could 
find or invent, tumbling into our cots in 
the dark each night after the others had 
fallen asleep. 

We were relieved at eight o'clock by the 
night nurse and drove back by "camio- 
nette" to the caves. The sky was red where 
the roar of artillery showed the fighting was 
going on. It seemed very near. We knew 
the bridge was mined and that we might 
have to leave at a moment's notice. Day 



206 HOSPITAL HEROES 

after day this life went on with no change, 
not even of clothing. I was too tired to 
worry about the poor dying blesses or the 
danger. The feeling of it all being a dreadful 
nightmare from which we must waken 
acted as a narcotic. It seemed too unreal 
and too unnatural to last. 

Early in April, the French reserves began 
their counter-attacks to break the German 
offensive. These battles were so costly that 
we had to work night and day, sometimes 
thirty-six hours without a rest and only 
a little food snatched quickly before an 
orderly appeared announcing: "Encore des 
entrants !" 

Our Auto Chir was installed in barracks 
near the one in which I had been working. 
As soon as the first ward was ready we 
moved our blesses into it, those that still 
Hved. The task of reinstalling an evacuated 
hospital at a moment's notice with blesses 
arriving all the time was gigantic. Madame 
Carrel gave us some supplies from her 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 207 

hospital, which had been bombed. We spent 
many days carrying mattresses and making 
bed after bed, in one ward after another, 
in the confusion of conflicting and con- 
tradictory orders. 

"These mattresses must not be used 
here. The whole ward will have to be done 
over with the mattresses in the next pa- 
vilion." Or the medecin-chef would say, 
"There are too many beds in this room" 
or "Those beds must all be taken out of 
here. They belong to the officers' ward at 
the end of the pavilion," 

When there was time, we slept and ate 
in a barrack of brick and cement like the 
wards at the end of the row of "pavilions." 
The place suggested a prison more than 
anything else. At first there were no sheets 
for our beds, eight in a room with no parti- 
tions, but as we were always chilly and 
damp living in such a cellar, we did not 
mind sleeping in our clothes. Behind each 
bed was a shelf running around the room 



208 HOSPITAL HEROES 

on whicli to unpack whatever we might 
need in a hurry. These shelves were an 
untidy smattering of soap, condensed milk, 
cigarettes, powder, malted-milk tablets, a 
tooth-brush, a candle, and almost anything. 
Our possessions were reduced to the lowest 
common denominator, the rest being stowed 
under the bed. 

Our only needs were sleep and food. Even 
these were not always obtainable. It is 
hard for eight people to be quiet, or should 
I say, eight women ? Some one writes letters 
by a flickering candle, some one snores, 
some one makes a hot drink, and others 
gossip about people at home. As for food, 
mouse-trap cheese and rancid butter seemed 
to be ever with us. Potatoes were the vege- 
table, and eggs or tinned food the meat. 
Confiture was available but there was only 
enough for one turn. Being so poor in qual- 
ity, the food did not give us an appetite; 
quite the contrary. After each meal we 
would make coffee or chocolate and smoke 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 209 

to fill up the gaps. I shall never scorn /*Fati- 
mas" or "Lucky Strikes," for they helped 
to "keep the home-fires burning" at this 
critical time. 

Pinning two strips of red flannel on a 
towel, we put up a flag by the first "pa- 
vilion" so that the ambulance-drivers would 
know where to leave the wounded. Ours 
must have, been the only field-hospital for 
miles around, for they kept arriving, from 
various services, French and American, 
leaving broken bodies with bandages half 
fallen off the hastily dressed wounds, re- 
turning again and again with more. We 
had only room for the worst cases, mostly 
hemorrhages, so the less serious were sent 
farther south to a base-hospital. 

I went on twenty-four-hour duty in the 
triage, or receiving-room. Every other night 
is enough for sleep, and I used the rest of 
my off-duty time to help unpack boxes of 
supplies or do odd jobs in the "salle de 
pansements," where dressings were done so 



210 HOSPITAL HEROES 

continually that things could not be pre- 
pared fast enough. It would have been im- 
possible to sleep in the daytime with every 
one coming into the room. 

The triage is kept warm with a stove 
that heats water for the washing and 
hot-water bags. There are rests for five 
stretchers, and beside each a little table 
with basin, soap, brushes, and towels. A 
meagre supply of hot-water bags hang on 
nails along the wall. Towels and shirts are 
kept on shelves at one end of the room. At 
the other, near the window, is a long table 
with benches where the sergeant and his 
orderlies, all of them priests, write the his- 
tories of the men who are brought in. They 
also print beautifully lettered signs to be put 
on doors of ofiices and wards. Opposite their 
table is my dressing-cart with a large supply 
of bottles, compresses, bandages, and cotton, 
with an alcohol-lamp on a shelf continually 
burning to sterilize syringes and needles. 

Only five men can be attended to at a 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 211 

time, so some have to wait in the next room, 
where the stretchers and blankets are kept. 
There they He, moaning and begging for 
water, until the "brancardiers" carry them 
into the triage, where they are undressed 
and washed by the two "laveurs" and me 
as quickly as possible, given an injection 
of antitetanus and any other "piqure" 
needed to stimulate them. Sometimes a 
500-grammes saline injection is necessary. 
The great need and hope that an injection 
may give them less pain or even save their 
lives made this task less difficult, though 
I had dreaded it so much a few months 
before in the ward when it was time for 
the second antitetanus "piqiire." The 
desire to help overcame my former reluc- 
tance and I was very generous with strych- 
nia, morphia, and camphorated oil. How- 
ever, after twenty-four hours of this I 
would sometimes come to the dining-room 
pinching my arms, automatically looking 
for a place to insert a needle. 



212 HOSPITAL HEROES 

Reinforcing the dressings was another 
hard part of my work. Most of the blesses 
had received first-aid treatment, but the 
ride in a jolting ambulance had loosened 
their dressings, so that some of them fell 
off, and all were soaked through with blood. 
Many hemorrhages had to be stopped. 

One time I had to put several compresses 
in a large hole in a man's back while he 
leaned forward on the stretcher. Fearing 
that the strain might be too great, I stopped 
in the midst of my extempore dressing to 
look around at him. What was my sur- 
prise to see him white and hollow-eyed but 
smoking a cigarette ! 

An officer, not to be outdone, fumbled 
among his "effets" for an old newspaper, 
which he held upside down waiting for an 
operation from which he did not recover. 

There were so many being brought in 
all the time that the operating-room was 
always full. Some of the blesses had to 
wait, lying on stretchers many hours until 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 213 

there was a vacancy. There were plenty 
of "aides-majors" to do the dressings but 
few surgeons to operate. 

Some of the men were sent to the X-ray 
first to have the position of pieces of shell 
marked on their bodies and data recorded. 
There were more of these "radioscopies" 
done in a rush than plates photographed. 
I would sometimes have to stand by the 
table to hold a delirious blesse who threw 
himself about, as the "radiographe" had his 
hands full with his complicated apparatus. 

I would make a list of the most urgent. 
Sometimes I would take a serious case to 
the operating-room myself right away, hold- 
ing one end of the stretcher and kneeling 
on the floor by the door regardless of mud 
to keep frantic hands from scratching an 
open wound. 

Sometimes German prisoners were 
brought in. One would expect them to be 
coolly received in the midst of so many 
suffering Frenchmen, and I marvelled at 



214 HOSPITAL HEROES 

the great humanity that made the doctors 
and orderhes care for their enemies as well 
as their own countrymen. In spite of the 
many atrocities one hears, these prisoners 
always said, "Thank you very much," in 
French, when I gave them hypodermics, 
which according to their Kultur might have 
been poison. With their hats off they are 
not a bit impressive or fierce. Their heads 
are flat in the back, as if things had been 
left out. When one of them was dying, I 
did not put him on the urgent hst, think- 
ing the French more important. But a doc- 
tor came in and hurried him off right away. 
Returning from the "radio" or operating- 
room after accompanying the stretchers to 
open doors, keeping some one from falling 
off, or reminding the " brancardiers " with a 
"Doucement!" that they were not jogging 
along swinging bags, I would make a hasty 
survey of the two waiting-rooms to see if 
there were any hemorrhages or if a "pi- 
qure" was needed. 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 215 

In the triage there would always be new 
arrivals waiting, and each must have a 
nasal injection and gargle preparatory to 
his operation, a clean shirt, and hot-water 
bag if there was one left. I had to collect 
and redistribute them among the most 
urgent. To shuffle five among fifty -five men 
or more arriving in a night took careful 
management. 

There was enough work for several "in- 
firmieres," but I never called for assistance, 
because every one else was working over- 
time in her department. The arduous task 
of doing so many things at once over and 
over again, and being in several rooms at 
the same time, acted as a panacea at this 
time of danger and anxiety. It was stiff, 
dirty work, not sympathetic, as the ward 
had been. There were no smiles here, only 
moaning and writhing and an occasional 
stoic "It is going better now. Thank you," 
that was almost harder to bear than com- 
plaining or delirious crying. 



216 HOSPITAL HEROES 

The conscious were the hardest to watch, 
for they were so brave in their agony. The 
shell-shocked and delirious are mercifully 
dulled to pain. The sight of so many mangled 
bodies is appalling, some carried face down- 
ward, and all suffering excruciating torture 
from more than one wound. There is little 
complaining or swearing, only a low moan- 
ing sound of a hurt animal, broken by 
sharp cries of "O, la, la, how I suffer!" or 
some feverish one talking about his wife or 
mother. 

"Mademoiselle, I am the last my parents 
have. Don't let me leave them. The others 
are killed. I must go back to them." I had 
scarcely time to reassure him when from 
the next stretcher would come frightened 
cries of "The Boches ! the Boches! they 
will get to Paris, my beautiful Paris ! They 
will assassinate the world, the whole world ! " 

Then all would be quiet except for the 
sound of washing as the "laveurs" worked 
on and on, and the twisting, writhing, and 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 217 

turning of aching bodies in search of the 
least painful position. Sometimes a pool of 
blood under the stretcher would show that 
some urgent case must be hurried to the 
operating-room. Sometimes a pale greenish- 
gray color would spread over a white face, 
and a gurgling noise would tell me that it 
was too late to hurry this one. The "bran- 
cardiers" did not like to see me cry, and 
I have seen them hurrying off with some 
blesse, whispering: "Quick! He must not 
die here!" 

It was harder to see the men brought in 
wearing their uniforms than it had been 
in the ward when they appeared washed 
and operated, with clean bandages, the 
worst over as a rule and a hopeful con- 
valescence ahead. In my off-duty time I 
would sometimes look through the wards 
to see how they came through, but I gave 
up this idea, as it was too sad to find how 
few survived. 

No wonder our newspaper reporters write 



218 HOSPITAL HEROES 

encouraging accounts of the dilapidation of 
the German prisoners, in spite of which 
fact war goes on. All men look hke tramps 
after weeks and months of exposure in the 
trenches, with their faces gray and tired 
and almost as stiff and muddy as their 
uniforms. They are a pathetic sight in their 
uniforms, once so new and proud, now all 
torn, blood-stained, and caked with clayey 
yellow mud. The mud clings to their clothes 
and hair and wounds. One could knock it 
off in lumps. They look so forlorn lying on 
the straw-covered stretchers with their 
hobnailed boots sticking out beyond the 
blanket, on which are sometimes scattered 
cigarettes from the precious supply of a 
kind-hearted ambulance-driver (American, 
of course !), but lying unnoticed before the 
staring, unseeing eyes that look beyond 
with an expression that pleads for some- 
thing we cannot give. 

To realize the poverty of France after 
four years of war, one should see the order- 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 219 

lies pulling an exhausted, panting man out 
of his clothes instead of ripping them quickly 
and letting him save what strength remains 
for his operation. When I hurry to the 
rescue with my scissors, they mutter dis- 
approvingly: 

"Mademoiselle is American and does not 
know what poverty is. France is too poor 
to give new uniforms to all these men." 

I would stagger back at the end of my 
twenty-four hours to report, with an apron 
and often a face spattered with blood and 
mud, and yet a spirit radiant and unweary 
with the thrill of service. A feeble whisper 
of thanks from the lips of a man suffering 
untellable agony or the unspoken gratitude 
in dying eyes made me realize that the girl 
who had started humbly and ignorantly 
to be in a supply-room was making good 
in a real work. 

The operating goes on night and day, 
the old cases when there is time and the 
new cases always. Our life seemed unreal, 



220 HOSPITAL HEROES 

like a series of moving pictures turned very 
fast over and over again. All day and all 
night the ambulances would rumble in and 
out, and more piles of dirty, blood-soaked 
clothes would be taken away to be washed 
or burned. These little heaps were very 
sad. Here would be a sweater, torn and 
stained, made by some loving hands, and 
there a precious band that every poilu 
wraps around his waist cut ruthlessly and 
thrown away. 

As soon as blesses could be evacuated, 
they were sent off in "peniches," the old 
boats that used to go up and down the 
Seine being used instead of trains. Skirting 
the banks, green with budding trees, they 
were safe from Taubes. How restful this 
ride must have been ! 

The work was not an uninterrupted 
series of horrors. Even the triage had its 
diversions. When not busy, the priests 
would make sketches and caricatures. There 
was a staff of Annamites in saffron -colored 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 221 

uniforms and red turbans, who cleaned 
and swept and carried stretchers. They 
were absolutely alike and seemed Httle 
boys more than grown men. The sergeant 
and I had to manage them by pantomime 
orders, which was quite amusing, as they 
spoke and understood only a guttural lan- 
guage of monosyllables. Generals would 
make tours of inspection, and for a while 
some American doctors followed me about 
asking me to explain what I was doing. 
I had had all my training in French and 
knew only the French terms for every- 
thing. They added greatly to the confusion 
and made me rather nervous, but habit 
had made me sure of my work. No matter 
what happened I could not lose my sense 
of humor, and found it hard not to laugh 
when one blesse took out some false teeth 
and solemnly washed them in the water 
I had prepared for him to gargle. 

For a long while no mail penetrated to 
our new post. Among the first letters that 



222 HOSPITAL HEROES 

came was one from a "fiUeul" enclosing 
some flowers which he had found on the 
edge of his trench a few kilometres from 
the German lines. Imagine a man shooting 
other men, stopping to notice or even being 
able to see flowers, and then send them to 
a foreigner who spoke his language with 
difficulty and just happened to take care 
of him for a while when he was hurt ! 

My life had been going on indoors as if 
I were in a tunnel, and it was hard to real- 
ize that spring had come outside in spite 
of war. It seemed ironical and almost cruel 
that flowers could have the heart to bloom 
and that birds could sing as merrily as 
they did before these four years of sadness 
and suffering. Perhaps the earth, neglected 
and unable to produce grain to nourish her 
poilus, was doing her best to compensate 
with flowers for the delight of their souls. 
And the poilus, even on the edge of battle- 
fields, appreciate her efforts with souls not 
weakened but exalted by war. They still 



DURING THE GERMAN ADVANCE 223 

have eyes to see violets growing on the 
sides of their trenches. It will take more 
than militarism to conquer these poilus of 
France. 

And in the triage, day after day, and 
night after night, the "brancardiers" 
shuffled back and forth carrying shattered 
pieces of these same poilus to be patched 
up and sent back to the trenches. No won- 
der Lord Kitchener said: 

"The best soldier is the healed wounded 
man who returns to the fire." 



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